The Plain Truth

Mainstream-media journalist 'discovers' WND

This is by and about my brother-in-law Joe Kovacs of WND.com. A fun read!

Cave Junction, Oregon?

“What in the world – let alone where – is a Cave Junction, Oregon?”

This was among the first thoughts flashing through my head when Joseph Farah told me in the late 1990s that I’d have to move my life 3,500 miles away from my Florida home if I wished to work for WND, then known by its longer name of WorldNetDaily.

I rushed to a worn-out Atlas of the United States, and opened it to a page that seemed brand-new compared to all the others up and down the I-95 corridor from New England to Florida, where I had spent most of my life.

From my Eastern-boy view of things, too many of the Western states just seemed like giant rectangles, but I was finally able to locate the tiniest dot on the map in the southwestern corner of the Oregon rectangle.

Before making the cross-country and life-changing trip into real journalism in 1999, though, you might find it interesting to peek back at my previous 15 years in the news business prior to WND.

So let’s hit the rewind button and travel back to 1984.

Yes, there was more to life than “Miami Vice.”

It was the era of America’s last real president, the legendary Ronald Reagan.

I was working my first job in the so-called mainstream media, reporting for a newsradio station on Palm Beach, Fla. And when I say on Palm Beach, I mean ON the beach. The studio at the time was situated on oceanfront property, and sand often filled the parking lot.

It was in November of ’84 that a wicked storm blew a giant Venezuelan cargo ship called the Mercedes I out of the Atlantic Ocean and into the swimming pool of seaside resident Mollie Wilmot.

A Venezuelan freighter becomes a Florida resident in November 1984 (photo: Joe Kovacs)

I was fortunate to be among the first people on the scene,  and started snapping photos of the huge vessel. The boat was so massive, I simply could not fit the whole thing in a single frame.

Prince Charles, left, plays polo in Wellington, Fla., in 1985 (photo: Joe Kovacs)

The story became an international sensation, and I just had the feeling that I was in the business truly intended for me.

Despite being young and barely shaving, I received many other choice assignments, including covering Britain’s Prince Charles playing polo while his more-famous-than-he spouse, better known as Princess Diana, watched from a protected perch above the action.

I spent 10 years broadcasting news on the radio before making the jump to television, where I ran network affiliates and got to hang out with some of the biggest names in the industry, such as ABC News legend Peter Jennings.

But after 15 years in the so-called mainstream media, the news became somewhat repetitive to me. On any given day, certain stories were always covered, without exception. For instance, although it’s been many years since I’ve been running local TV news stations, I can virtually guarantee you that on July 4, 2012, you can turn on virtually any Florida television station and you’ll see the typical stories about the Coast Guard and other marine agencies on the hunt for drunk boaters, as well as some kind of report about how not to leave your hand full of bloody nubs where your fingers used to be before blowing them off with fireworks.

I also realized that many events my colleagues covered were not just an objective reporting of facts. There seemed to be an agenda behind many of the stories, not just in their selection, but in the way they were reported. I grew frustrated and perhaps a little jaded, and desperately wanted to cover real news, the important events of the nation and world, without any political agenda as an undercurrent.

Enter Joseph Farah, a man whose name I had never heard before.

I discovered his WorldNetDaily in early 1999, when it was still in its infancy, even before it was an actual company. I was astonished by how much major news one or two people could cover with a basic computer keyboard.

As I perused the news on WND, I was amazed at the sources from which many of the reports originated. There were papers that I’d never previously read, such as the London Telegraph, the Australian and the South China Morning Post. It was a far cry from the typical blather we’d so often say in TV or radio: “The New York Times is reporting yada, yada, yada.” It was as if there were no other source for my colleagues in the broadcast media.

Anyway, one day at the bottom of the website, there was a headline that read: “Come work for WorldNetDaily.” Once I clicked on the associated article, it said something to the effect of, “We want to turn this operation into the best news source in the world.”

That’s all I needed to hear. Or read. Whatever.

It was my chance to get out of the B.S. world of broadcast “news” and enter the real world of hard-hitting journalism. I immediately emailed my résumé, and the next thing I knew, I was on a cross-country flight for a job interview with Farah himself.

Now, I have to tell you, my personality is one that often tosses in jokes or sarcastic humor at almost every possible chance. But I didn’t want my jokingness to interfere with getting the job, so I convinced myself to be on my bestest behavior for the interview, and I acted much more seriously than I normally would. I wasn’t immediately hired, as WND was making the transition from a not-for-profit group to a for-profit company.

I didn’t find out until later that I was almost not hired because Farah thought I was “too serious” in my interview. It was about 6 months into my working for WND that I broke into my Jackie Gleason impersonation, quoting his famous catchphrase of “Homina, homina, homina.”

Farah then asked me if I liked “The Honeymooners” TV show.

When I said it was one of my favorite programs, he exclaimed, “If you had said that during your interview, I would have hired you on the spot!”

I was finally brought aboard in October of 1999 to be the guy who puts together the WND news pages and write catchy headlines. Moving from South Florida to the northwestern part of America was a big change. There was hardly anything in Josephine County, Ore., that resembled civilization as I knew it. It was like I somehow traveled through a time warp and ended back in the Old West. There was one lonely Burger King present in a town called Grants Pass, so I figured it had at least some connection to the 20th century, which was about to change into the 21st.

WND's original office on a ranch in Selma, Ore. (photo: Joe Kovacs)

The original WND “headquarters” – if you can call it that – was in an extremely remote location called Selma, Ore., adjacent to Cave Junction. The office consisted of a glorified barn situated on Tall Timber Ranch.

While the ranch provided a scenic vista, the working conditions on the inside provided less-than-smooth sailing for the first year.

Scenic view from WND's original office in Selma, Ore. (photo: Joe Kovacs)

There was no high-speed Internet available when we first started. We were at the mercy of dial-up service, and unfortunately, the service provider would often just drop dead, especially in the evening hours when we were busiest preparing the freshest edition of WND. Remember, we were basically in Nowheresville, USA.

Also, my email did not work properly for the first month, and Farah kept asking me how we were supposed to run a news operation without email.

There were a few rooms with showers in the building, but after bathing in the putrid, rust-colored “water” being vomited from the shower head, I decided never to wash there again.

One day, we suffered a total power failure that lasted all day, and I was forced to leave the office just to be able to make sure WND got posted.

Having said all that, I was ecstatic to be there. It didn’t matter that we were physically situated in another dimension.

I had finally found a news agency that cared about reporting the news. I mean the real news. The news that matters. Not the daily body count of who shot whom and what’s the weather guess. I was working with some of the finest journalists alive, and everyone there knew (and still knows) that we indeed have a team gifted and blessed with extraordinary talent.

I think readers both old and new instantly recognize they get more real journalism from WND than any other news source on the planet, whether it was from the middle of nowhere, or now headquartered in new offices in the nation’s capital.

It was, and still is, all about finding and reporting the most important, hard-hitting, relevant and interesting information on any given day. Because we don’t follow the drumbeat of the mainstream media, we’re free to focus on what’s important to real people, without the phony-baloney hype and agenda-driven reports that seem so ubiquitous in today’s news industry.

Since the start of the brand-new millennium, I’ve written hundreds of news reports for WND. My colleagues have written thousands more cumulatively with tons of scoops over the years. My own archive is packed with stories ranging from the possible discovery of ancient Egyptian chariot wheels sitting at the bottom of the Red Sea, to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s probe of Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, to roundups of the funniest news of the year.

I’ve also had the freedom to write books such as “Shocked by the Bible” and “The Divine Secret: The Awesome and Untold Truth About Your Phenomenal Destiny” (coming July 17). If I were still in the brain-dead world of TV and radio news, I don’t know that I ever would have produced those focus-on-God projects.

And it’s the God of the Bible who ultimately matters. He is the real news, the Good News with whom everyone needs to get right as soon as possible.

As WND continues its ascension to the top of the news world, I thank our Creator that He’s raised this agency to be such a driving force in the New Media today.

It truly is a free press for a free people.

 

NASCAR rolls on without a wreck, lousy weather and a shrinking audience

By: Michael Phillips | Times-Dispatch

As fans left Richmond International Raceway late Saturday night, the track's video board played a NASCAR highlight reel.

The video represented the most marketable aspects of auto racing, with paint being traded, three-wide racing and wrecks interspersed with rock music.

Reality, however, suggested something different as the Capital City 400 became the third consecutive Sprint Cup race run with no wrecks and long stretches of green-flag racing.

NASCAR has always been an evolving sport, with constant rule changes and car modifications, and with each week, the calls grow louder for the governing body to do something to inject excitement into races.

The drivers aren't so sure that's needed.

"I don't think it's right to say that we need wrecks," Carl Edwards said. "That's just a messed-up thing to say. I think we need good racing, and I think if you've got guys that are able to race close together and guys that are able to come through the field because their car is better and they can actually pass people, you are going to get excitement."

TV ratings and attendance are defining measures of success, though, and they're causing concern. A cold night and rainy day contributed to less-than-stellar attendance at RIR, with the backstretch about half full when the green flag dropped.

Fox also seemed to lose interest in the race, peppering the broadcasts with advertisements for next week's race at Talladega that emphasized that track's ability to generate crashes.

Read The rest!>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Jailed for $280: The Return of Debtors' Prisons

How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn't pay a medical bill -- one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn't owe. "She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn't have to pay it," The Associated Press reports. "But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs." Read the story here>>>

Discovery Plane Crash Documentary

Discovery has crashed a plane for new documentary.

Discovery Channel has crashed a plane in the Mexican desert for its new series "Curiosity." According to the network, a Boeing 727 passenger jet was deliberately crashed in an uninhabited Mexican desert. No damages or injuries occurred.

No passengers were on the plane, instead it was packed with science experiments like crash test dummies. Cameras recorded the crash from inside the plane, on the ground, from other planes and from the ejecting pilot's helmet.

"This ground breaking project features an actual crash of a passenger jet and explores the big questions about how to make plane crashes more survivable; it's the ideal premiere episode for our 'Curiosity' series that stirs the imagination of our audience, bravely asking questions and fearlessly seeking answers. This latest production captures that audaciousness perfectly and I can't wait to share it," Eileen O'Neill, group president of Discovery and TLC Networks, said in a statement.

The aircraft will be salvaged and according to Discovery, an extensive environmental clean-up operation will be carried out in cooperation with Mexican authorities.

"NASA were the last people to attempt a crash test of a full passenger jet three decades ago," Sanjay Singhal, executive producer from Dragonfly Film and Television Productions, said in a statement. "Now, with the improvements in filming and remote control technology we felt that the time was right to do it again. It's never been safer to fly, but we want to use this as an opportunity to provide scientific data that might help to improve passenger safety in those extremely rare cases when a catastrophic aircraft accident does occur."

The crash and results are scheduled to air later in 2012 as a feature-length documentary on Discovery Channel in the US, Channel 4 in the UK and Pro Sieben in Germany.

SOURCE:

George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting-The REAL STORY!

You haven't heard this before! A Black business partner,the vicious Pit Bull attack, Why he really carried a gun, a neigborhood in fear of violent black criminals and much more.....

 

(Reuters) - A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.

The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law's dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show.

"Don't use pepper spray," he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. "It'll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to jump you," he said.

"Get a gun."

That November, the Zimmermans completed firearms training at a local lodge and received concealed-weapons gun permits. In early December, another source close to them told Reuters, the couple bought a pair of guns. George picked a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun, a popular, lightweight weapon.

By June 2011, Zimmerman's attention had shifted from a loose pit bull to a wave of robberies that rattled the community, called the Retreat at Twin Lakes. The homeowners association asked him to launch a neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman would begin to carry the Kel-Tec on his regular, dog-walking patrol - a violation of neighborhood watch guidelines but not a crime.

Few of his closest neighbors knew he carried a gun - until two months ago. On February 26, George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in what Zimmerman says was self-defense. The furor that ensued has consumed the country and prompted a re-examination of guns, race and self-defense laws enacted in nearly half the United States.

During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old.

But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman's past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting.

Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America.

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.

"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."

"MIXED" HOUSEHOLD

George Michael Zimmerman was born in 1983 to Robert and Gladys Zimmerman, the third of four children. Robert Zimmerman Sr. was a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1970, and was stationed at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, in 1975 with Gladys Mesa's brother George. Zimmerman Sr. also served two tours in Korea, and spent the final 10 years of his 22-year military career in the Pentagon, working for the Department of Defense, a family member said.

In his final years in Virginia before retiring to Florida, Robert Zimmerman served as a magistrate in Fairfax County's 19th Judicial District.

Robert and Gladys met in January 1975, when George Mesa brought along his army buddy to his sister's birthday party. She was visiting from Peru, on vacation from her job there as a physical education teacher. Robert was a Baptist, Gladys was Catholic. They soon married, in a Catholic ceremony in Alexandria, and moved to nearby Manassas.

Gladys came to lead a small but growing Catholic Hispanic enclave within the All Saints Catholic Church parish in the late 1970s, where she was involved in the church's outreach programs. Gladys would bring young George along with her on "home visits" to poor families, said a family friend, Teresa Post.

"It was part of their upbringing to know that there are people in need, people more in need than themselves," said Post, a Peruvian immigrant who lived with the Zimmermans for a time.

Post recalls evening prayers before dinner in the ethnically diverse Zimmerman household, which included siblings Robert Jr., Grace, and Dawn. "It wasn't only white or only Hispanic or only black - it was mixed," she said.

Zimmerman's maternal grandmother, Cristina, who had lived with the Zimmermans since 1978, worked as a babysitter for years during Zimmerman's childhood. For several years she cared for two African-American girls who ate their meals at the Zimmerman house and went back and forth to school each day with the Zimmerman children.

"They were part of the household for years, until they were old enough to be on their own," Post said.

Zimmerman served as an altar boy at All Saints from age 7 to 17, church members said.

"He wasn't the type where, you know, 'I'm being forced to do this,' and a dragging-his-feet Catholic," said Sandra Vega, who went to high school with George and his siblings. "He was an altar boy for years, and then worked in the rectory too. He has a really good heart."

George grew up bilingual, and by age 10 he was often called to the Haydon Elementary School principal's office to act as a translator between administrators and immigrant parents. At 14 he became obsessed with becoming a Marine, a relative said, joining the after-school ROTC program at Grace E. Metz Middle School and polishing his boots by night. At 15, he worked three part-time jobs - in a Mexican restaurant, for the rectory, and washing cars - on nights and weekends, to save up for a car.

After graduating from Osbourn High School in 2001, Zimmerman moved to Lake Mary, Florida, a town neighboring Sanford. His parents purchased a retirement home there in 2002, in part to bring Cristina, who suffers from arthritis, to a warmer climate.

YOUNG INSURANCE AGENT

On his own at 18, George got a job at an insurance agency and began to take classes at night to earn a license to sell insurance. He grew friendly with a real estate agent named Lee Ann Benjamin, who shared office space in the building, and later her husband, John Donnelly, a Sanford attorney.

"George impressed me right off the bat as just a real go-getter," Donnelly said. "He was working days and taking all these classes at night, passing all the insurance classes, not just for home insurance, but auto insurance and everything. He wanted to open his own office - and he did."

In 2004, Zimmerman partnered with an African-American friend and opened up an Allstate insurance satellite office, Donnelly said.

Then came 2005, and a series of troubles. Zimmerman's business failed, he was arrested, and he broke off an engagement with a woman who filed a restraining order against him.

That July, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer after shoving an undercover alcohol-control agent who was arresting an under-age friend of Zimmerman's at a bar. He avoided conviction by agreeing to participate in a pre-trial diversion program that included anger-management classes.

In August, Zimmerman's fiancee at the time, Veronica Zuazo, filed a civil motion for a restraining order alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman reciprocated with his own order on the same grounds, and both orders were granted. The relationship ended.

In 2007 he married Shellie Dean, a licensed cosmetologist, and in 2009 the couple rented a townhouse in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman had bounced from job to job for a couple of years, working at a car dealership and a mortgage company. At times, according to testimony from Shellie at a bond hearing for Zimmerman last week, the couple filed for unemployment benefits.

Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College in 2009, and in December 2011 he was permitted to participate in a school graduation ceremony, despite being a course credit shy of his associate's degree in criminal justice. Zimmerman was completing that course credit when the shooting occurred.

On March 22, nearly a month after the shooting and with the controversy by then swirling nationwide, the school issued a press release saying it was taking the "unusual, but necessary" step of withdrawing Zimmerman's enrollment, citing "the safety of our students on campus as well as for Mr. Zimmerman."

A NEIGHBORHOOD IN FEAR

By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today.

At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood.

In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men. Twin Lakes is about 50 percent white, with an African-American and Hispanic population of about 20 percent each, roughly similar to the surrounding city of Sanford, according to U.S. Census data.

One morning in July 2011, a black teenager walked up to Zimmerman's front porch and stole a bicycle, neighbors told Reuters. A police report was taken, though the bicycle was not recovered.

But it was the August incursion into the home of Olivia Bertalan that really troubled the neighborhood, particularly Zimmerman. Shellie was home most days, taking online courses towards certification as a registered nurse.

On August 3, Bertalan was at home with her infant son while her husband, Michael, was at work. She watched from a downstairs window, she said, as two black men repeatedly rang her doorbell and then entered through a sliding door at the back of the house. She ran upstairs, locked herself inside the boy's bedroom, and called a police dispatcher, whispering frantically.

"I said, 'What am I supposed to do? I hear them coming up the stairs!'" she told Reuters. Bertalan tried to coo her crying child into silence and armed herself with a pair of rusty scissors.

Police arrived just as the burglars - who had been trying to disconnect the couple's television - fled out a back door. Shellie Zimmerman saw a black male teen running through her backyard and reported it to police.

After police left Bertalan, George Zimmerman arrived at the front door in a shirt and tie, she said. He gave her his contact numbers on an index card and invited her to visit his wife if she ever felt unsafe. He returned later and gave her a stronger lock to bolster the sliding door that had been forced open.

"He was so mellow and calm, very helpful and very, very sweet," she said last week. "We didn't really know George at first, but after the break-in we talked to him on a daily basis. People were freaked out. It wasn't just George calling police ... we were calling police at least once a week."

In September, a group of neighbors including Zimmerman approached the homeowners association with their concerns, she said. Zimmerman was asked to head up a new neighborhood watch. He agreed.

"PLEASE CONTACT OUR CAPTAIN"

Police had advised Bertalan to get a dog. She and her husband decided to move out instead, and left two days before the shooting. Zimmerman took the advice.

"He'd already had a mutt that he walked around the neighborhood every night - man, he loved that dog - but after that home invasion he also got a Rottweiler," said Jorge Rodriguez, a friend and neighbor of the Zimmermans.

Around the same time, Zimmerman also gave Rodriguez and his wife, Audria, his contact information, so they could reach him day or night. Rodriguez showed the index card to Reuters. In neat cursive was a list of George and Shellie's home number and cell phones, as well as their emails.

Less than two weeks later, another Twin Lakes home was burglarized, police reports show. Two weeks after that, a home under construction was vandalized.

The Retreat at Twin Lakes e-newsletter for February 2012 noted: "The Sanford PD has announced an increased patrol within our neighborhood ... during peak crime hours.

"If you've been a victim of a crime in the community, after calling police, please contact our captain, George Zimmerman."

EMMANUEL BURGESS - SETTING THE STAGE

On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman placed a call to Sanford police after spotting a young black man he recognized peering into the windows of a neighbor's empty home, according to several friends and neighbors.

"I don't know what he's doing. I don't want to approach him, personally," Zimmerman said in the call, which was recorded. The dispatcher advised him that a patrol car was on the way. By the time police arrived, according to the dispatch report, the suspect had fled.

On February 6, the home of another Twin Lakes resident, Tatiana Demeacis, was burglarized. Two roofers working directly across the street said they saw two African-American men lingering in the yard at the time of the break-in. A new laptop and some gold jewelry were stolen. One of the roofers called police the next day after spotting one of the suspects among a group of male teenagers, three black and one white, on bicycles.

Police found Demeacis's laptop in the backpack of 18-year-old Emmanuel Burgess, police reports show, and charged him with dealing in stolen property. Burgess was the same man Zimmerman had spotted on February 2.

Burgess had committed a series of burglaries on the other side of town in 2008 and 2009, pleaded guilty to several, and spent all of 2010 incarcerated in a juvenile facility, his attorney said. He is now in jail on parole violations.

Three days after Burgess was arrested, Zimmerman's grandmother was hospitalized for an infection, and the following week his father was also admitted for a heart condition. Zimmerman spent a number of those nights on a hospital room couch.

Ten days after his father was hospitalized, Zimmerman noticed another young man in the neighborhood, acting in a way he found familiar, so he made another call to police.

"We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy," Zimmerman said, as Trayvon Martin returned home from the store.

The last time Zimmerman had called police, to report Burgess, he followed protocol and waited for police to arrive. They were too late, and Burgess got away.

This time, Zimmerman was not so patient, and he disregarded police advice against pursuing Martin.

"These assholes," he muttered in an aside, "they always get away."

After the phone call ended, several minutes passed when the movements of Zimmerman and Martin remain a mystery.

Moments later, Martin lay dead with a bullet in his chest.

(Editing by David Adams, Daniel Trotta and Prudence Crowther)

 

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Senate Probe Finds Little Evidence of Effective 'Torture' Techniques

Bob Barney: Seems strange to me, the torture the Japenese did, and the Germans did, worked pretty well in the past..... As well as in Vietnam. Even John McCain, an ardent opponet of torture admitted this fact...

A nearly three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to find there is little evidence the harsh "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA used on high-value prisoners produced counter-terrorism breakthroughs.

People familiar with the inquiry said committee investigators, who have been poring over records from the administration of President George W. Bush, believe they do not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups.

The backers of such techniques, which include "water-boarding," sleep deprivation and other practices critics call torture, maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al Qaeda leaders.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Senate Probe Finds Little Evidence of Effective 'Torture' Techniques 
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

 

Paradigm Shift: Impact Didn’t Kill Dinosaurs

A new study casts doubt on whether asteroid impacts led to extinctions.  It’s based on re-interpreting geological evidence used to identify impacts.  This finding, if sustained, would undermine the theory that an impact killed off the dinosaurs and a later impact led to the extinction of many large mammals.  Even more significant, an overturn of the impact hypothesis would illustrate that scientists are capable of going off on wrong tangents for decades.

The study by the U.S. Geological Survey, reported by PhysOrg, found that “impact markers,” such as “elevated levels of iridium, magnetic spherules, and titanomagnetite grains,” can form in wetlands and marshes called black mats.  The impact markers had been used to support the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction and a more “hotly contested” Younger Dryas Impact theory that led to extinction of the Clovis culture allegedly 12,900 years ago.  The new study published by Pigati et al in PNAS¹ casts doubt on the uses of these markers to infer asteroid impacts.  The abstract states,

In this study, we investigated black mats ranging in age from approximately 6 to more than 40 ka in the southwestern United States and the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. At 10 of 13 sites, we found elevated concentrations of iridium in bulk and magnetic sediments, magnetic spherules, and/or titanomagnetite grains within or at the base of black mats, regardless of their age or location, suggesting that elevated concentrations of these markers arise from processes common to wetland systems, and not a catastrophic extraterrestrial impact event.

The “impact” of this re-interpretation goes beyond extinction theories:

“Luis and Walter Alvarez’s proposal that an extraterrestrial impact was responsible for extinctions at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary eventually moved from unlikely hypothesis to accepted theory, and with its acceptance came the temptation to apply this explanation to any rapid change in Earth’s conditions,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “The results of this study demonstrate the importance of maintaining a healthy skepticism and multiple working hypotheses.”….

 Continue Reading on crev.info

 

Obama is Putting US on Slow Boat to China

Even Stalin would have had a very long way to go before becoming the owner of the globe. Russia, which Stalin seized, technologically lagged behind countries with developed capitalist systems. 

Germany, for example, had become industrialized long before Russia.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev examines a bust of Soviet physicist Yulii Khariton in 2009. Khariton was a chief designer of the Soviet atomic bomb.  (Getty Images)

It is hard to imagine what Russia would have been like a century after 1917 if not for its owners’ invention of a new Soviet-style propagandist pseudo-culture and their desperate efforts to have the country militarized at any price, even at the expense of millions of lives lost either from starvation or in hard labor camps — the source of the Soviet-slave workforce. 

The Soviet project to develop an atomic bomb was a clandestine R&D program begun during post-World War II, in the wake of Stalin’s discovery of the U.S. nuclear project. 

Through sources in the Manhattan Project, the Soviet intelligence obtained important information on the progress of the U.S. atomic bomb effort. 

In 1945, after winning the war over Hitler’s Germany and realizing that America had successfully deployed the atom bomb against Japan, Stalin accelerated nuclear research to develop his own atom bomb, which was tested in 1949, thus making Soviet Russia the second nuclear nation after the United States. 

Why is freedom so precious and why are there so many people living under dictatorial regimes who are trying to escape from them and come to live in these United States? The answer to this question is that this unique country provides unlimited possibilities to those free-thinking and talented people who want to express their original ideas and ambitions to pursue and realize their ideals. It allows them to live their lives according to their wishes. 

Yet the beacon of freedom is growing dim.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Obama is Putting US on Slow Boat to China
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Alan Dershowitz: Zimmerman Arrest Affidavit "Irresponsible And Unethical"

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Exxon Mobil is set to drill into a massive, 85-billion-barrel arctic oil reserve

The bad news: They're doing it for Russia, not America. ...

Oil: First, some very good news on the energy front: Exxon Mobil is set to drill into a massive, 85-billion-barrel arctic oil reserve that will soon be gushing crude. Now the bad news: They're doing it for Russia, not America.

Limbaugh Laughs at CBS‘ Leslie Stahl Calling It ’Orwellian‘ for KSM to Be Forced to Drink ’Ensure’

(Image: Ensure)

The interview between CBS’ Leslie Stahl and former Director of the National Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez set to air on “60 Minutes” this Sunday has Rush Limbaugh laughing already.

A clip from the interview features the two talking about the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) — the 9/11 mastermind who was captured in 2003 and taken to Guantánamo Bay. Along with water boarding and sleep deprivation, another form of treatment of Guantánamo prisoners includes dietary manipulation. For KSM, this meant the drink Ensure. Stahl says ”What, his Ensure? You mean like people in the hospital who will eat that stuff?“ Rodriguez called dietary manipulation ”part of these dire techniques.“ Stahl called it ”Orwellian stuff.”

Watch the exchange:

Christ Didn't Come To Save the World!

Oh God, Where Were You When I Needed You?

A farming family in Pa lost seven children in a morning blaze. An earthquake and tidal wave strikes Japan and kills maybe thousands... What causes such terrible tragedies and where was God when this happened?   Garner Ted Armstrong's insight is a must read...

 

The preceding story was related to me by the father of the boys, an executive in the radio business from Alaska, when he attended the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago, Illinois.

        I had been invited to give the invocation at a dinner for about 2,000 radio-station owners and managers from all over the country; the main speaker that day was Paul Harvey.

        During the recess after lunch, one of the radio executives asked if he might ask me a personal question. He then related the tragic story of his two baby sons' death. He had already asked his own pastor, or perhaps two or more ministers. He and his wife were searching for some understanding; they needed to know WHY—WHY would a loving God allow this to happen?

        How WOULD YOU ANSWER?

        If there IS a God, and if GOD IS LOVE, then WHY?

        Now, if someone asks some other person that question, he has a perfect out. All most people have to do is to cluck away sympathetically, or, if genuine emotion is really felt, show some sincere empathy with such a tragically bewildered parent. However, it only requires a polite disclaimer: "I've always wondered about that too," or, "Well, I don't know. I lost a son in Vietnam, and I have never understood why he had to die when all these others..."

        But this was different.
        I am a minister.

        He had asked a minister: a man who had been preaching the Word of God over his radio station for years, a man who had just finished delivering a heartfelt prayer to God in front of 2,000 hard-bitten businessmen.

        No minister could simply shake his head and profess he didn't have the answer to such a tragic, perplexing question. But the gentleman told me he had already asked two or three others, and they merely muttered something vague about "mysterious" ways of God and faith and such, and allowed as how "His ways are past finding out."

        By the time the man and his wife wrestled with these vague generalities for a while, they were as distraught and puzzled as ever. Hurt, bewildered, feeling deserted in their most desperate hour of need, they kept reliving their anguished attempts for hour upon hour to revive their twin boys, their frantic mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, their desperate tears, their prayers.

        "WHY DID GOD LET MY TWO BABY BOYS DIE?"

        I began to explain.

Tragedies—by the Millions

 

 

Judge wants definition of 'natural born citizen'

A federal judge has determined in a case challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility for a state ballot that the meaning of the constitutional phrase “natural born citizen” is “important and not trivial.”

U.S. District Judge S. Thomas Anderson of Tennessee said the courts ultimately must define “natural born citizen,” affirming that the “issue of whether President Obama is constitutionally qualified to run for the presidency is certainly substantial.”   MORE>>>>>>>>>>

Rogers: Loose Fed Policy Is Bad for US Economy

The Federal Reserve's loose monetary policies, which the central bank maintained Wednesday, have rewarded America's bad habits of spending too much and not paying down enough debt, says noted international investor Jim Rogers.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Rogers: Loose Fed Policy Is Bad for US Economy
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

EPA Official on Non-Compliant Companies: ‘Hit Them as Hard as You Can’ & ‘Make Examples Out of Them,’ Cites Crucifixion

Are you familiar with a certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official named Al Armendariz?

Chances are you’ve never heard of him. We suspect most Americans haven’t. However, with the recent unearthing of the video below, that could change very soon.

Thanks to a little digging by the staff of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), attention has been brought to a 2010 video that seems to confirm what many conservative have long suspected: that the EPA is at war with the oil and gas industries.

“[O]il and gas is an enforcement priority, it’s one of seven, so we are going to spend a fair amount of time looking at oil and gas production,” Armendariz says in the video. MORE

Want to Know More About the Militant Islamist Groups Exposed in ‘Rumors of War III’? This Companion Profile Tells You

This Wednesday evening at 7:00 p.m. ET on GBTV, Glenn Beck unveils the highly anticipated special, “Rumors of War III, Target U.S.” The documentary will examine how radical Islamist groups including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, are gaining a foothold in America, be it via the growing threat of Mexican drug cartels or the infiltration of Muslim Brotherhood mouthpieces in the U.S. government. Given that the Obama administration has essentially declared the war on terror over, it seems some have chosen to dismiss the power, reach and actual motivations of these militant groups. In order to understand the threat, however, one must understand who these Islamists really are — their roots, ideology and ultimate stated goals.

The Muslim Brotherhood: “Jihad is our way” MORE>>

Christianity without Christmas? Or Easter?

How did dinosaurs get miles under the earth? Book deflates traditional theories about 'fossil fuels'

The Bakken formation in North Dakota, Montana and Canada now is estimated to hold up to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, only it’s available primarily when the price of oil is above a bargain rate – as the oil is located miles deep and drilling costs are substantial.

So a new book about oil, “The Great Oil Conspiracy: How the U.S. Government Hid the Nazi Discovery of Abiotic Oil from the American People” by New York Times bestselling author Jerome Corsi, asks how did the dinosaurs that died and became part of those “fossil fuels” get to be tens of thousands of feet under the surface?

That’s just one of the many questions addressed in the book that takes many traditional beliefs about oil – it’s finite, it’s made through the process of various life forms dying and decaying, and others – and explains that they are just wrong.

How do we know? From government documents.

The incredible moment £80,000 Porsche 911 somersaulted through the air after 100mph crash...

This is the incredible moment a classic Porsche 911 was catapulted through the air following a high-speed smash - and the driver walked away unharmed.

Amateur racer Bryan Taylor, 63, was taking part in the Philip Island Classic race in Melbourne, Australia, when he came up behind a Corvette.

The Corvette driver suddenly lost control, with Taylor clipping it at 100mph as he tried to get past, causing his Porsche to leave the ground.

Scroll to see footage of the crash...

Shocking: This is the incredible moment a classic Porsche 911 was catapulted through the air following a collision - and the driver walked away unharmed

 

Chaos: Amateur racer Bryan Taylor, 63, was taking part in the Philip Island Classic race in Melbourne, Australia when he came up behind a Corvette

 

Catapult: The Corvette driver suddenly lost control with the Porsche driver clipping it at around 100mph as he tried to get past, causing his Porsche to leave the ground

Hurled: Despite the dramatic barrel role, the driver emerged from the wreck unscathed - only suffering minor bruising as a result of his safety harnesses

He then somersaulted through the air, lifting more than 15 feet off the tarmac before rolling the £80,000 Porsche three times along the racetrack.

Despite the dramatic barrel role, Taylor emerged from the wreck unscathed - only suffering minor bruising as a result of his safety harnesses.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2134368/When-hell-thing-going-stop-The-incredible-moment-80-000-Porsche-911-somersaulted-air-100mph-crash--driver-walked-away-UNHARMED.html#ixzz1t3TkMf49

Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores

GUTHRIE, TX - OCTOBER 24: Cole Hatfield tends to his show steers on the 6666 Ranch October 24, 2007 in Guthrie, Texas on October 24, 2007. (Photo by Rick Gershon/Getty Images)

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”

The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.

Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.

“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t3OpCLIR

 

Trayvon Martin and Gun Violence — Setting the Stage for Gun Control in Obama’s Second Term

Brandon Pierce, Contributor
Activist Post

The controversial killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman as a “neighborhood watch patrol” is one of the biggest stories of 2012 so far.  And with his trial upcoming, it will continue to be so.

The incident is a rallying point for those that think that gun control is a necessary evil for the United States and that it is time for the Second Amendment (you know, the one that guarantees that we have the right to bear arms) to be nullified.

Many people believe that President Obama will seek some sort of legislation if he is re-elected to a second term in November that will cripple the ability of the American people to get guns. Or ammo. Many conspiracy theorists believe that Obama might try to make it more difficult to get the bullets than the guns.  By restricting ammunition, the guns that are currently in American’s hands would be rendered harmless and useless. 

Read more »

Rome's desperate housewives: Forget orgies, over-eating and incest, Mrs Average in Caesar's reign was just like us (but x-rated)

Age-old problems: The ancient Romans experienced the same ups and downs as their modern day counterparts

We think we know about the private lives of the ancient Romans, don’t we? That morally barren metropolis, with its seething pit of orgies, over-eating, incest and families so dysfunctional they made our royals look positively mundane.

Daily life for upper-class Roman women centuries ago — so we fondly believe — was packed full of secret trysts with unsuitable bruisers or  ex-gladiators, slotted between intricate plots to bump off their husbands with a dose of poison.

And that was just among the idle upper classes. Over in the royal courts, far worse was going on.

Anyone old enough to remember the Seventies BBC series I Claudius, with Derek Jacobi stuttering his way through the main role, will tell you with absolute conviction how the Empress Agrippina knocked off the emperor with a serving of poisoned mushrooms, before sneaking her young son Nero, the murderous teenager from hell, on to the throne and having a revolting, incestuous relationship with him.

It’s all juicy, shocking stuff, worthy of any BBC plotline, and the reason why the ancient Romans continue to fascinate us to this day. But was it all true?

As a Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, who has devoted my career to the study of Roman civilisation, it’s a question I’m often asked. And the simple answer is: some is, some isn’t, but often we just haven’t a clue.

Romans, like us, loved telling tall stories about the dreadful things their royal family did; and the same pinch of salt is needed here, as with our own tales of the current junior royals’ exploits.

But it always made me wonder what life was like lower down the pecking order. If the aristocracy is portrayed like that, what was life like for ordinary Romans? It is these untold stories of the ordinary working classes that have always fascinated me, and which I researched extensively for my current series, Meet The Romans, now showing on BBC2.

This underbelly of the Roman world didn’t get much written about in the classics of Latin literature; ancient historians like Livy and Tacitus, whose work we can still read, are much more interested in politicians and generals than in Mr and Mrs Ordinary.

But, luckily, I have tapped into a rich source of information which has afforded us in the 21st century a fascinating, warts-and-all insight into these lives.

It reveals how, with their problems juggling family life, work, affairs, unwanted pregnancies — and even unwanted body hair — ordinary Romans had more in common with us than we ever could have imagined.

Try this snapshot from 2,000 years ago: a  newly-married couple settle down to family life. The husband is quite a bit older than his wife, but they’re clearly besotted and a baby girl soon follows. All is fine for a while, but eight years later tragedy strikes when the child dies of a mystery illness.

Her death places a huge strain on the relationship, and before long the wife is seeking comfort in an extra-marital affair. She finally leaves her husband for her young lover, taking with her more than her fair share of the marital property.

For most ancient women, living before reliable contraception, married life meant just one thing: pregnancy after pregnancy

The ex-husband is left behind, a bitter, grumpy old man, willing to slate his faithless trollop of a wife to whomever will listen.

It’s a good modern soap-opera plot: but, in fact, it’s the true story of a couple of ordinary Romans — we might call them ‘lower middle-class’. We even know their names: Euphrosynus and Acte, and their little girl Junia Procula — all good classical names. Oh, and the marital property Acte took when she bolted was a pair of rather valuable slaves.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2133010/Romes-desperate-housewives-Forget-orgies-eating-incest-Mrs-Average-Caesars-reign-just-like-x-rated.html#ixzz1stW09PvX

Driver sues NASCAR, claims he was excluded from diversity program for being ‘too Caucasian’

Michael Rodriguez, a driver from Pennsylvania, says in his complaint filed in U.S. District Court that he was denied the opportunity to compete in the 2005 and 2006 Drive For Diversity combines.

Rodriguez is suing NASCAR and Access Communications, which operated NASCAR’s diversity program from its inception in 2004 until 2008 and conducted the combines that are designed for teams in NASCAR’s regional series to scout minority drivers.

NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program was created to develop minority drivers and crewmen and help them advance through the NASCAR ranks with the goal of reaching the sport’s top series. Since 2004, the program has included 41 drivers, with most being selected multiple times. There currently are six drivers in the program racing in various NASCAR regional series.

Rodriguez, now in his early 20s, is asking for undetermined damages for violation of his civil rights.

NASCAR and Access Communications are seeking to get the case, filed in January 2010, thrown out before it goes to trial. Attorneys for NASCAR and the company argued their side in a summary judgment hearing Wednesday in federal court in Charlotte.

Read more: http://aol.sportingnews.com/nascar/story/2012-04-19/nascar-driver-lawsuit-michael-rodriguez-drive-for-diversity#ixzz1saG0Rlov

UPDATE:

Apr 23, 2012 - Bob Pockrass
Nascar loses motion against diversity, Rodgriquez case set for trial

Pattie Petty out as chair of Victory Junction board -- Updated story

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Pattie Petty has accepted a "goodwill ambassador position" with Victory Junction and will no longer serve as chair and CEO.

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Owen Covington

Reporter - The Business Journal

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Pattie Petty has accepted a "goodwill ambassador position" with Victory Junction, the camp for children with chronic diseases, and will no longer serve as chair and CEO.

Petty, the wife of former NASCAR driver Kyle Petty, founded the Victory Junction Gang Camp    Victory Junction Gang Camp Latest from The Business Journals Follow this company on 72 acres in Randleman in memory of her son, Adam, who was killed in 2000 during a practice session at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The Kansas City Star reported Saturday that the Victory Junction board of directors informed Petty that she would no longer be part of the day-to-day operations of the camp. The Pettys announced plans in 2007 to build a $35 million Victory Junction Midwest in the Kansas City area, and Petty has apparently been living part-time in Kansas City to raise funds for the project, according to the newspaper.

Petty told the Star that the members of the Victory Junction board "don't want anything to do with me" and that "I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the word came back to me I was making irrational decisions."   MORE>>>>>>>>>>>