Can Democrats run the country

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by athard

The Democrats are a perfect example of political hypocrisy in the United States. They have spoken at length about the need to unite America but haven't been able to be united themselves. The Hillary versus Barack Obama battle is an example of this. Hillary Clinton went out of her way to find dirt on Obama and when she couldn't, she just adopted the Republican tactics of creating dirt on Obama and scaring people with it.

In the endeavor to win the nomination, Hillary kept on hurting Obama and some of the wounds may not heal in time for the big battle with McCain. She and her camp spent time and resources to slander Obama. While John McCain secured the nomination and went on to campaign for the white house, these two battled it out and just made each other weaker.

The blame doesn't lie with Hillary alone. Everyone knows how power hungry and ruthless the Clintons can be. But what about the Democrats? They never once ventured to stop Hillary and ask her to play fair. They knew that the party was being hurt and that a spot in the White House is at risk, yet they stepped aside while Hillary tried to undemocratically secure the nomination.

Two months before Obama secured the nomination, the super delegates could have cast their votes and ended this. Instead, they chose to sit back.

What makes these "leaders" qualified to run the country if they can't even step in and do the right thing for their party? Why wait? The time to do the right it is ALWAYS right now.

So my question is, when it comes to doing the right thing for the country, will they step up or will they step aside?

http://www.whois-barack-obama.com

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Pittsburgh Newspapers

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by J.R. Scott

There are two main Pittsburgh Newspapers. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Each of these papers has it's good and bad. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette leans to the left, the Tribune Review toward the right with a bit of a Libertarian slant. If these leanings were not true than why do these papers endorse candidates. Granted at times these endorsements cross party lines but that is an exception rather than the rule. It should be the responsibility of any media outlet to report on politics and not endorse candidates or take a partisan stance on the news. This however is not practical given human limitations and ego. I personally do not believe we will ever see true neutrality in reporting. The Pittsburgh newspapers I am discussing are just an example of the media in general in the United States, while the bias is a problem things could be worse. At least we know they are not government controlled.


These Pittsburgh newspapers the Post Gazette and Tribune review suffer from the same problems that most media outlets do. Unfortunately some people get there news from an even worse source. I prefer to refer to them as the windbags . These windbags are not journalists. For the most part I don't believe they claim to be. Some people however use them as their source of news. This is not so much a problem in Pittsburgh Newspapers and other print media as the opinion and editorial section is clearly labeled. Be warned, sometimes these windbags do get print space in other parts of the paper though. Who are these windbags? It is not hard to spot them. These windbags generally do not try to hide their political opinions. They tend not to ever sway in their support of certain politicians even when faced with evidence of misdoings by said politicians. Most of these windbags are closed minded people not willing to truly see the other side of the argument. Windbags of one side will often battle opposing windbags in hopes of increasing ratings. Just a couple of examples are Keith Olbermann and Bill O'reilly. It is important to realize these windbags are not journalists. They are commentators. The so-called news they report has been totally spun before dissemination. The windbags are indeed fun to watch at times but are no more enlightening than The Jerry Springer Show. We do have windbags in Pittsburgh News papers, I'll let you decide who they are.

There are some solutions to the problem of media bias in Pittsburgh Newspapers as well as any media outlet.

First you could not read the paper, not watch the news and be an uninformed citizen. This is not really a good solution and is not being a responsible citizen.

The other solution is to read both (sometimes there are more than two) sides of the story. In my opinion this is the perfect solution to an unavoidable problem. To become truly informed get out of your comfort zone. If you only get the news from a source who's political leanings agree with yours, you will never really be informed. There are three sides to every story. Get the rights take on it, the lefts take on it, and you should find the truth somewhere in the middle.

I do not believe there is middle ground in any media that exists today. The thought of no bias in reporting is a bit of a pipe dream. It is the responsibility of journalists however to not let this bias actually jeopardize the dissemination of fact. To be properly informed especially on matters that may be political one should probably read both Pittsburgh newspapers, and come to a judgment decision or opinion based on the case presented by either side.

I realize that my take on the Pittsburgh newspapers may not be the same as everyone else's. I guess that make me a commentator. The views that have been expressed are my opinions. I'm sure some may even call me a windbag. I just feel that it is the responsibility of every citizen to become informed especially in such an important election year. So the next time you pick up a newspaper in Pittsburgh why not pick up a copy of the Post Gazette as well as a copy of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

http://city-of-pittsburgh.net

Just about all media swings left or right ,Pittsburgh newspapers are a great example of how one offsets the other. The city of Pittsburgh

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We Need Cheap Gas Not Cheap Talk

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by melpol

The foundation of the universe is energy. Nothing is possible without its existence. In the beginning there was only pure energy--some call it God. We on earth basically depend on the Sun and oil as our chief source of energy. Without the Sun we would die. It was once possible to survive without using oil, but it has now become the life force of civilization. Owners of the oil supplies are the most powerful people in the world,and that is why wars are now being fought over the rights to the oil fields in the Middle-East. The winners will get the big prize---enough cheap energy to keep their populations living in prosperity. The losers will suffer poverty,chaos and beg for mercy.

Every product you use is dependent on oil. The foods you eat comes from a farm that needs oil for its harvesters. The crops are nourished by oil based fertilizers and insecticides. It takes lots of oil to manufacture food packaging machinery and paper containers. Refrigerated trucks are needed to get food to the markets. Some have to travel over a thousand miles and use many tanks of diesel fuel in order to feed us. Oil is as important as our blood because we have lost the ability to live without it.

The oil pumps of the world are going full blast. They have what the world needs and they are feeding it to them as fast as possible. Billions are being invested in oil drilling but as much as they drill they can`t keep up with the demand. One of the reasons for this is the worlds population is growing to quickly. The other reason is that the amount of oil in the ground has reached its limit and increased production has become almost impossible. If that is true and the demand keeps increasing we will soon be fighting for every drop of oil.

The United States is the largest consumer of oil in the world and in order to guard our way of life we must protect our oil supplies. If you use your imagination, think what would happen if we had to pay unaffordable prices for gas. There would be chaos and famine. All responsible Americans should do all that is possible to prevent that tragedy from happening.The best way to do that would be to pick a leader that would make sure we had affordable gas and plenty of it. We are now lucky to have the opportunity to pick a man with military experience and a fighters disposition. He will never let Americans beg for oil. I am speaking about John McCain. But if you are a dreamer like John Lennon and want to imagine a world full of peaceful and content people---vote for the other guy. But be ready to ride a bicycle looking for a job.
melpol

http://www.associatedcontent.com/melpol

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The World's Biggest Pollution Factory

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by Peter Navarro

The coal that has powered China's economic growth . . . is also choking its people.

-- Elizabeth C. Economy


At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial production to cooking and space heating in the home. China relies on coal for almost 75% of its energy needs. In fact, each year, China consumes more coal than Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined.

The scale and scope of China's coal power plant construction program is almost beyond one's imagination. Consider that every single week, China adds one new large coal power plant to its energy base. Every single year, China builds enough new coal plants to light up the entire British Isles. In any given year, the amount of coal-fired capacity that China is building amounts to more than double that of the entire electricity-generating capacity of the state of California-more than 100 gigawatts. That China's coal appetites are voracious is aptly captured in this passage from the Wall Street Journal:

"On a recent hazy morning in eastern China, the Wuhu Shaoda power company revved up its production of electricity, burning a ton and a half of coal per minute to satisfy more than half the demand of Wuhu, an industrial city of two million people. "

It's not just the quantity of coal used by China that matters. The large amount of coal in China's "energy mix" is quite different from virtually all the other major economies of the world, which depend much more on oil. China's heavy coal dependence, coupled with a woeful lack of pollution-control technologies, make China's air-quality problem a very different one from that of developed countries, such as the United States and Germany, in at least three ways:

First, unlike in the United States, Germany, or Japan where sophisticated pollution-control technologies are deployed, much of what Chinese power plants and factories spew in the air is not just sulfur dioxide but also a high percentage of fine particulate matter. This is a critical observation because particulate matter is the most damaging form of airborne pollutants.

Second, small cities in China are no better off than large cities in terms of ambient air quality. This is because small cities are as likely as large cities to depend on coal in both their residential and commercial sectors. That means that China's pollution woes are spread over the entire country in cities small and large rather than concentrated in a few large industrial hubs.

Third, unlike the developed world where the automobile is the single largest source of air pollution, China's current problem is primarily a "stationary source" one. These stationary sources range from large coal-fired power plants in huge factory towns to small coal-fired stoves and heaters in peasant homes.

The nightmare here is that even if China is able to get better pollution controls on its power plants, and even if it is able to convert some of its population to natural gas cooking, China's air basins are still likely to be overwhelmed in the next several decades by an explosion in the number of new vehicles on Chinese roads. Just consider this astonishing statistic reported by Elizabeth C. Economy: China is now adding 15,000 new cars a day to its roads, and it expects to have more cars than the United States -- as many as 130 million -- as early as 2040. In addition, Elizabeth C. Economy also reports the following:

First, China is expected to construct fully half of all the buildings in the world over the next 25 years. Beyond sheer quantity, the nightmare here is that these buildings will be electricity sinkholes because Chinese buildings are notoriously energy inefficient. This will only further exacerbate China's coal dependence and collaterally gargantuan pollution emissions.

Second, China plans to move almost a half a billion peasants off the farm into factories and cities over the next several decades. As a rule, urbanites introduced to the magic of refrigerators, TVs, and toasters use more than three times the amount of energy as their rural counterparts.

On top of all this, Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared. If ever there were a blueprint for a global pollution factory, China would be the model.


The above is an excerpt from the book The Coming China Wars
by Peter Navarro
Published by FT Press; May 2008;$15.99US/$17.99CAN; 978-0-13-235982-5
Copyright © 2008 Peter Navarro

Author Bio
Peter Navarro a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, is the author of the best- selling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks and the path-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy. Professor Navarro is a widely sought after and gifted public speaker and a regular CNBC contributor. Prior to joining CNBC, he appeared frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review. His book, The Coming China Wars, is available from FT Press.

www.peternavarro.com; www.comingchinawars.com

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The World's Biggest Pollution Factory

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by Peter Navarro

The coal that has powered China's economic growth . . . is also choking its people.

-- Elizabeth C. Economy


At the root of many of China's air-quality problems is its heavy dependence on relatively high-sulfur, low-quality coal for everything from electricity generation and industrial production to cooking and space heating in the home. China relies on coal for almost 75% of its energy needs. In fact, each year, China consumes more coal than Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States combined.

The scale and scope of China's coal power plant construction program is almost beyond one's imagination. Consider that every single week, China adds one new large coal power plant to its energy base. Every single year, China builds enough new coal plants to light up the entire British Isles. In any given year, the amount of coal-fired capacity that China is building amounts to more than double that of the entire electricity-generating capacity of the state of California-more than 100 gigawatts. That China's coal appetites are voracious is aptly captured in this passage from the Wall Street Journal:

"On a recent hazy morning in eastern China, the Wuhu Shaoda power company revved up its production of electricity, burning a ton and a half of coal per minute to satisfy more than half the demand of Wuhu, an industrial city of two million people. "

It's not just the quantity of coal used by China that matters. The large amount of coal in China's "energy mix" is quite different from virtually all the other major economies of the world, which depend much more on oil. China's heavy coal dependence, coupled with a woeful lack of pollution-control technologies, make China's air-quality problem a very different one from that of developed countries, such as the United States and Germany, in at least three ways:

First, unlike in the United States, Germany, or Japan where sophisticated pollution-control technologies are deployed, much of what Chinese power plants and factories spew in the air is not just sulfur dioxide but also a high percentage of fine particulate matter. This is a critical observation because particulate matter is the most damaging form of airborne pollutants.

Second, small cities in China are no better off than large cities in terms of ambient air quality. This is because small cities are as likely as large cities to depend on coal in both their residential and commercial sectors. That means that China's pollution woes are spread over the entire country in cities small and large rather than concentrated in a few large industrial hubs.

Third, unlike the developed world where the automobile is the single largest source of air pollution, China's current problem is primarily a "stationary source" one. These stationary sources range from large coal-fired power plants in huge factory towns to small coal-fired stoves and heaters in peasant homes.

The nightmare here is that even if China is able to get better pollution controls on its power plants, and even if it is able to convert some of its population to natural gas cooking, China's air basins are still likely to be overwhelmed in the next several decades by an explosion in the number of new vehicles on Chinese roads. Just consider this astonishing statistic reported by Elizabeth C. Economy: China is now adding 15,000 new cars a day to its roads, and it expects to have more cars than the United States -- as many as 130 million -- as early as 2040. In addition, Elizabeth C. Economy also reports the following:

First, China is expected to construct fully half of all the buildings in the world over the next 25 years. Beyond sheer quantity, the nightmare here is that these buildings will be electricity sinkholes because Chinese buildings are notoriously energy inefficient. This will only further exacerbate China's coal dependence and collaterally gargantuan pollution emissions.

Second, China plans to move almost a half a billion peasants off the farm into factories and cities over the next several decades. As a rule, urbanites introduced to the magic of refrigerators, TVs, and toasters use more than three times the amount of energy as their rural counterparts.

On top of all this, Chinese manufacturers are extremely energy inefficient. To produce an equivalent amount of goods, they use six times more resources than the United States, seven times more resources than Japan, and, most embarrassingly, three times more resources than India, to which China is most frequently compared. If ever there were a blueprint for a global pollution factory, China would be the model.


The above is an excerpt from the book The Coming China Wars
by Peter Navarro
Published by FT Press; May 2008;$15.99US/$17.99CAN; 978-0-13-235982-5
Copyright © 2008 Peter Navarro

Author Bio
Peter Navarro a business professor at the University of California-Irvine, is the author of the best- selling investment book If It's Raining in Brazil, Buy Starbucks and the path-breaking management book, The Well-Timed Strategy. Professor Navarro is a widely sought after and gifted public speaker and a regular CNBC contributor. Prior to joining CNBC, he appeared frequently on Bloomberg TV, CNN, and NPR, as well as on all three major network news shows. He has testified before Congress and the U.S.-China Commission and his work has appeared in publications ranging from Business Week, the L.A. Times, and New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review. His book, The Coming China Wars, is available from FT Press.

www.peternavarro.com; www.comingchinawars.com

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Volatility Rocks The Investment Markets

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by sanserve

Gets your attention, doesn't it? The unfortunate thing though, is that most people will react negatively to this intentionally inflammatory, media-ready, title statement. Has some Wall Street virus attacked our financial experience memory chip? Bouncing around unpredictably is precisely what the markets have always done. In the last forty years, there have been no less than ten 20% or greater corrections followed by rallies that brought the markets to significantly higher levels. Volatility is not a bad thing--- a non-event, even.

Ironically, it is this routine volatility (caused by hundreds of human, economic, political, and natural variables) that is the only real certainty existent in the financial markets. Would anyone be happy with market prices that didn't change? Should anyone expect market valuations that only go up? So what's all the anxiety, scrambling, and crying about? As absurd as this may sound at first blush, you will never become a successful investor until you are able to embrace market volatility as your dearest and closest friend.

The Wall Street media is also your friend, because it fans investor emotions to the point where rational thinking becomes impossible for most participants. My observation the other night at dinner (that the 400 point drop in the DJIA had provided an opportunity to purchase dozens of IGV stocks at bargain prices) was met with vacant stares. When I added that nearly half of those stocks had been sold profitably in recent weeks--- you can imagine the shocked silence that followed.

Investor perceptions of volatility need to be rearranged. When you allow more than an up-only smiley face into your understanding of the markets, you will be able to position yourself to actually take advantage of the volatility while it is happening. When you realize that the causes of market gyrations are not nearly as important as the opportunities for bargain hunting and profit taking that they produce, you'll be able to grow and to protect your portfolios from your emotional dark side.

Let's talk about reality. There are many different ways that professional investors and speculators make their fortunes in the financial markets. The key is to know whether the path you are following is too speculative for the destination you are seeking. Over the past twenty years or so, the stock market has provided the best returns for most investors--- yes, even better than commodities, currencies, and ETFs (which didn't exist even ten years ago). But balanced investment portfolios, those containing both investment grade value stocks and income generating securities have probably surpassed all others.

Let's talk about causation. There are far too many variables affecting the movement of security prices to allow for accurate prediction of either the scope or duration of short-term gyrations. Every rally produces both a bubble of some kind and the pin that will eventually do the bursting. Hindsight identifies all the culprits and promises to regulate them out of the system so that the future will be different. Don't kid yourself. The next rally will come to the same bloody end as its predecessors. Volatility Rocks!

But this year we have the opportunity to assure that our economic future will be better. Much of the current skittishness in the financial markets is caused by multiple economic concerns and the incredibly naive resolution ideas being spouted by the presidential candidates. And there are other, somehow out of the limelight, economic issues that politicians are afraid to even consider. The primary economic issues (jobs, energy, and economic growth) need to be joined by Social Security reform, corporate tax reform, and term limitations in congress.

No president, no matter how bold, can bring about meaningful change without a less self-serving cast of characters in the legislative branch. But this kind of change can't happen until we replace the current batch of pork barrel politicians with a new group of change orientated decision makers. Today's congress legislates mind-numbing regulations that stifle creativity and economic growth. Investors need to support fewer "taxors" and to elect a whole new group of economic facilitators. Throw out the incumbents this November.

You just don't create jobs by taxing, regulating, and otherwise strangling the job creators. In most communities, local governments think of their non-voting corporate citizens as ratables instead of as job providers. Serious jobs would be created, and general price reductions produced (good or bad for the GDP?), through a controlled elimination of all income taxation on legitimate corporate job providers. Of course it would have to be regulated to assure jobs, price reductions, and shareholder benefits, and not just more perks for obscenely paid executives.

Similarly, taxing gasoline production and delivery organizations is not going to bring down the price per barrel of crude oil. But "taxing" the cartel that fixes the prices instead of bribing them with protection from their enemies could work almost as well as tapping into our own abundant supply and adding some long-needed refining capacity. Eliminating state and federal gasoline taxes and fees and taxes on interstate truckers would produce many cost/price benefits as well.

Economic growth, more jobs, and lower prices could be the immediate result of two relatively simple changes that neither of the Presidential hopefuls have the courage to even whisper about. Without nearly enough detail: (1) Over a five-year period, change Social Security to a mandated-contribution, deferred, individual fixed annuity program managed on a flat fee basis by 15-year experienced insurance companies. No variable (stock market) benefit plans would be allowed; all citizens would be eligible to participate, and all employed persons (Congress included) would be enrolled automatically. Contributions would be reduced and employer participation eliminated.

(2) Eliminate all taxation on any form of retirement income immediately, and phase out all taxation on all forms of investment income over a five-year period. Replace those taxes with a 1% Federal sales tax an all goods and services except food, shelter, clothing, and health care.

Then, we can start to replace the Internal Revenue Code with something simple, protect shareholders from unconscionable corporate executive compensation, and come up with a solution for providing adequate healthcare to everyone.

We have met the enemy and he is us--- Walt Kelly, Pogo


Stock market,investing,volatility,portfolio,mutual funds,DJIA,social security,jobs,oil prices,IRC,IRAs,retirement income,401(k),tax reform,rally,correction,gasoline,president,election,media,Wall Street

Steve Selengut http://www.sancoservices.com/ http://www.kiawahgolfinvestmentseminars.com Author of: "The Brainwashing of the American Investor: The Book that Wall Street Does Not Want YOU to Read", and "A Millionaire's Secret Investment Strategy"

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The Pentagon's Battle Plan Is To Go Green

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by James William Smith

The vote was 324-84 as the United States House of Representatives recently approved legislation allowing the Justice Department to sue members of OPEC . The House bill blames OPEC for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices. In effect, it says that gas and oil prices in America are too high and that OPEC should therefore produce more product.

Of course, the vote is a study in congressional hypocrisy as many of the same members, who for decades have opposed drilling for oil and gas in various parts of the United States, voted in favor of holding OPEC accountable for not producing enough. The sad reality for the Congress of the United States is that with the price of a barrel of oil now in excess of $125 and prices at the gas pump near or above $4.00 per gallon, the American public can now clearly see the dubious consequences of not having developed a coherent long term domestic energy strategy.

There is no short term solution to this worldwide energy shortage, either. The energy requirements of rapidly developing nations have combined with a lack of alternative energy planning to initiate the perfect energy storm for the consumer. There is just not enough supply to meet increasing long term energy demand. However, this economic reality eludes the grasp of the Washington beltway politicians. So, Congress wastes its time voting to sue OPEC for not producing more oil. An action, that if ever implemented, would certainly drive the price of oil and gas even higher.

The long term solution to the energy problem is independence from the very oil and gas sources that Congress is trying to sue OPEC to provide more of. In fact, the best examples of a future path to energy independence can be seen in the initiatives that the U.S. military has been using to address its own energy consumption.

Historically, the military has been a huge national energy hog. It consumes 340,000 barrels of oil a day, or 1.5% of all of the oil used in the country. The Defense Department's overall energy bill was $13.6 billion in 2006 (latest figure available). In fact, the Air Force's bill for jet fuel alone has tripled to $6 billion in just the past four years.

However, the Air Force is not acting like the U.S. Congress when confronted with the spiraling cost of energy. It is actually trying to do something tangible about the problem. The Air Force has been experimenting with alternative fuels to reduce its foreign dependence on energy while reducing cost. Their plan is to create a supersonic synthetic-fuel for the B-1 bomber. The Air Force is also experimenting to make engine parts out of lighter metals, such as titanium, in order boost fuel efficiency.

Meanwhile an Air Force base called Nellis near Las Vegas has just opened one of the largest solar arrays in the U.S., a 140-acre field of 72,000 motorized panels that powers the base and sells energy to nearby communities. The Pentagon is soliciting bids for three similar arrays on other bases. Another Air Force program in Iraq is turning the trash from Air Force bases into bio fuel.

The truth is that, for the last several years, the Pentagon has sponsored various initiatives to find solutions to the increasing cost of energy. These initiatives can be seen in all branches of military services. In the Army, engineers are instructing contractors to build armored vehicles with hybrid engines. In addition, research is well under way to explore the possibility of building small nuclear-power plants on unused portions of remote army bases.

The United States military has also sponsored a futuristic plan to collect solar energy on satellites and beam it back to Earth. This space-based solar power would use solar panel arrays to gather sunlight in orbit. It would then beam power down to Earth in the form of microwaves or a laser. Energy would be collected in antennas on the ground and then converted to electricity. Unlike solar panels based on the ground, solar power satellites placed in orbit above the Earth could operate at night and during cloudy conditions.

In fact, solar-power-generating satellites could also solve supply problems in distant places such as Iraq, where fuel is currently trucked along in dangerous convoys and the cost of electricity for some bases can exceed $1 per kilowatt-hour, about 10 times what it costs in the US. This technology has the potential to provide a clean, abundant energy source and reduce global competition for oil.

The Pentagon's battle plan to combat the ever increasing price of energy is to go green. Indeed, it is the use of American creativity and ingenuity that will solve our energy crisis in the future. The Pentagon certainly gets it. The absurd Congressional law suit against OPEC shows just how much the Washington beltway politicians do not.

James William Smith has worked in senior management positions for some of the largest financial services firms in the United States for the last twenty five years. He has also provided business consulting support for insurance organizations and start up businesses. Mr. Smith has a Bachelor of Science Degree from Boston College. He enjoys writing articles on political, national, and world events. Visit his website at http://www.eworldvu.com

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Hereward Legendary Hero

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by Fred Watson

All the countries of the world have their legendary heroes and the small group of islands that make up the United Kingdom have their fair share. One of those heroes was Hereward the Wake (wary) who led a group of resistance fighters against the forces of William the Conqueror who subjugated England in 1066. Hereward's group a mixture of Saxons and Danes and even the monks from the Abbey held the island of Ely deep in the marshland swamps of the Fens. The island was a place of thick reeds, disappearing paths and drowning pools, surrounded by forested areas of land and an ideal base for the resistance fighters.

As a youth Hereward was a bit of a hell-raiser (possibly because his father married his mother under Danelaw and as the son of a second wife he would have been considered the bastard son of a concubine in the eyes of the Christian community) and caused so much trouble that his father Earl Leofric of Mercia approached the then king, Edward the Confessor and asked him to exile his wayward son. The king agreed and sometime after his eighteenth birthday Hereward was declared an outlaw. (Meaning that the law gave him neither rights nor protection within his own country).

Outlawed in England, Hereward travelled first to the Scottish borders and after various adventures in Scotland, Cornwall and Ireland, his ship was nearly wrecked in a storm and he ended up in Flanders. Going under an assumed name he fought in the Flemish war and twice in other wars.

In the year 1066 the Norman William the Conqueror or (Duke William the Bastard) ended Anglo Saxon Rule in England by defeating Harold Godwinson at he battle of Hastings. To the victors go the spoils of war and after usurping the English throne, William seized many of lands and titles belonging to the English lords and doled them out to his Norman followers.

In 1067/8 Hereward returned to Bourne where his family held land. His father had died ten years before and now he found that in seizing his father's lands, the Normans had beheaded his young brother and mounted his head above the door. In retaliation Hereward slew fourteen Normans including their lord and mounted their heads in place of his brother's.

As soon as the news of the killings spread men came to join him and help defend his land against the French. Altogether he collected a sizable band of over forty men and on hearing that resistance fighters held the Isle of Ely he joined them and became their leader. From Ely Hereward would send raiding parties out to attack Norman travellers and soldiers, then disappeared back into the swamps again. One of those raids was carried out after the death Abbot Brand. On hearing that the abbot was to be replaced by a Norman, Hereward and his men attacked the Abbey of Peterborough and stripped it of its riches. Back in the swamp Hereward let it be known that he had stolen the treasure to prevent it falling into the hands of the Normans.

Three times William tried unsuccessfully to build causeways out to Ely but failed and he didn't try again. What he did instead was threaten to confiscate the lands belonging to the Abbey and one of the monks led the Norman forces along a secret path to the island. Hereward and some of his men escaped and continued their resistance to the Norman. But eventually William and he made peace. Legend has it that Hereward died as heroes' death some time later. He was attacked by sixteen men and killed them all with his famous sword Brainbiter, but was overpowered and stabbed to death by four men who came at him from behind.

Fred Watson published his first book, a fantasy adventure novel aimed at the 8-12 age group, in November 2006. A grandfather of four, he loves to write for all age groups, has an abiding interest in history and continues on a regular basis to add new stories etc to his website. Footprint Publishing

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Healthy, Wealthy and Wise?

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by Andrew L. Yarrow

What two vital features of American national life are inordinately costly compared to any other country, no longer deliver world-beating results, are increasingly inequitable, are highly dysfunctional, and elicit growing anger from much of the country's population?

It's not a trick question, but the very fact of these parallels is more than worth pondering.

The answer -- the two H's of health care and higher education. How did two sectors that had been proud symbols of American greatness from the late 19th to the late 20th centuries become emblematic of deep social and economic problems and the nation's slide from global pre-eminence?

America's overall health care bill has soared to about two and a quarter trillion dollars, about 17 percent of GDP -- up from 13 percent of a smaller economic pie just a decade ago, and headed toward 20 percent in a decade. This is roughly double the percentage for Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and other rich countries. Waste and vast overhead costs, overuse of medical services, insufficient competition, and lack of information about most cost-effective practices are among the culprits. Might as well trade in your flat-screen TV for a home MRI machine.

With private-college costs higher than median income, the United States now spends about 3 percent of GDP on higher education—again, roughly twice the percentage of virtually every other rich country, and they've increased about 3 ½ percentage points faster than GDP growth for the last several decades. Excessive demand making higher ed a seller's market, an "educational arms race" among colleges to have the fanciest facilities, and inadequate financial accountability are just a few of the reasons.

The problem would be bad enough in both sectors if it were just a matter of cost. But it's not. Not long ago, the United States was arguably tops in quality and results in both arenas.

The World Health Organization says that about three dozen other nations have better aggregate health-care outcomes, and the RAND Corporation found that barely half of the treatments that Americans receive are considered "best practices." Similarly, the OECD reports that about a dozen other nations have higher college graduation rates than the United States.

To make matters worse, a nation whose cherished ideals of equality were advanced immeasurably during the 20th century by the diffusion of high-quality health care and higher education now has become troublingly inequitable in both areas. Fifty million Americans lack health insurance and tens of millions of others have limited medical coverage, and access to good care varies tremendously by income. The wealthy get an Alfa Romeo system, the middle class a Toyota one, and the lower-income Americans get a beat-up-old Chevy.

Few Americans are happy with their medical care, and the once-beneficent image of the medical profession as a selfless corps of Marcus Welbys has given way to the more prevalent belief that doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are greedy, insensitive, fearful, incompetent, and as honest as the proverbial used-care salesman. Likewise, 75 to 80 percent of Americans are worried about college costs and debt, barley half think that students get a valuable return on higher education, half believe that colleges "mainly care about the bottom line," and three-fifths think that talented students do not have the opportunity to attend college (the numbers are higher among African Americans and Hispanics).

The factors driving the parallel fall from grace of American health care and higher education may be different, but the potential damage to a prosperous, optimistic American future in both cases is enormous. With both, serious cost control, standardization of high quality, and much greater equity are desperately needed.

Higher ed not only requires greater accountability, in part through regulation and tax policy, but also a radical re-think: Does every teen-ager really need to go to four-year colleges, and does every college need to look like a swank corporate conference center? And public dollars need to be freed from the burdens of entitlement spending at the federal and state levels to re-invigorate higher education.

How to control costs, particularly in health care, is the multi-trillion-dollar question of our generation. Universal insurance (not care), with government premium support, combined with some "managed competition" among insurance providers, greater cost-sharing (i.e., individuals paying more out of pocket), increased regulation of health-care providers and their costs (including overhead), a greater emphasis on public health, medical malpractice reform, some rationing of care, and use of information technology to disseminate best and most-cost-effective practices and maintain a national medical-records database all could help contain costs.

Without such changes, America simply won't be healthy, wealthy, or wise.

— Andrew L. Yarrow, Washington director and vice president of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan think tank, is a professor of U.S. history at American University, and the author of Forgive Us Our Debts, a book about the causes, consequences, and cures for America's national debt, published by Yale University Press this spring.

http:/www.publicagenda.com/ http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300123531

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Golden Jubilees

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by Dr. D.S. Merchant

"In August, 1935, Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah completed 50 years of his spiritual leadership and the Ismailis decided to pay a memorable tribute to their Imam by weighing him against gold and making a present of it, as a mark of their love and gratitude. For this grand program, an All-India Golden Jubilee Celebration Committee had been formed, which was inaugurated by Lady Aly Shah on October 16, 1935 at Bombay. Sir Ibrahim Rehmatullah was elected its President and Ghulam Ali Merchant as the Vice-President. Its working committee assigned Pir Sabzali to generate necessary donations through out India. The funds raising campaign started on October 23, 1935 from Kathiawar. He succeeded to collect a sum of five lac rupees in India.

Bombay was the venue for the celebrations in India. Huge crowd in festive and solemn mood had gathered at Hasanabad to attend the unique occasion on January 19, 1936. When the Imam and Begum arrived at 10.35 a.m. to receive one of the most spectacular ovations from a crowd of over 30,000 Ismailis, every inch of space in the Hasanabad ground was taken up. The Imam took his seat on the gadi embroidered in gold with the coat of arms of his family. To his right sat his mother, Lady Aly Shah, and to his left sat the Begum.

Mr. Ghulam Ali Merchant, Vice-President of the All India Golden Jubilee Committee made his welcome speech, saying: "Most reverently and respectfully I request that Your Highness will allow yourself to be weighed in gold on this happy and auspicious occasion, and accept the gold so weighed a humble token of our love, devotion and gratitude to Your Highness for all the unbounded bounty and benefits that Your Highness' followers have deriving during Your Highness' Imamate for the last 50 years."

The Imam rose from his gadi amidst great cheers and joy of the followers, and moved towards the weighing scale and took his seat on rich soft cushions placed for him. The weighing scale showed 3200 ounces of gold as his weight, valuing about 3,35,000 rupees.

Replying to the address, the Imam said: "I accept with great pleasure the gold my dear spiritual children have offered me and give them my loving and paternal spiritual blessings. I have decided to use the gold for the uplift of the spiritual children and appoint Mr. Ghulam Ali Merchant....to devise the best means of applying not only the income of this gold but the corpus also for intensive uplift work by way of all kinds of scholarships, relief by emigration from congested districts, infant welfare and other beneficial works."

The next Golden Jubilee celebrations at Nairobi, Kenya on March 1, 1936 was also as grand as those in Bombay. Once again the gold was presented to the Imam by the followers as a token of love , and once more the Imam returned the gift for the welfare of the Ismaili community.

Mumtaz Ali Tajddin S. Ali is an popular Ismaili Scholar, Written many books on Islam and Ismailism, Golen Jubilees is taken from Encyclopedia of Ismailism, also read 101 Ismaili Heroes

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Golden Jubilees

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by Dr. D.S. Merchant

"In August, 1935, Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah completed 50 years of his spiritual leadership and the Ismailis decided to pay a memorable tribute to their Imam by weighing him against gold and making a present of it, as a mark of their love and gratitude. For this grand program, an All-India Golden Jubilee Celebration Committee had been formed, which was inaugurated by Lady Aly Shah on October 16, 1935 at Bombay. Sir Ibrahim Rehmatullah was elected its President and Ghulam Ali Merchant as the Vice-President. Its working committee assigned Pir Sabzali to generate necessary donations through out India. The funds raising campaign started on October 23, 1935 from Kathiawar. He succeeded to collect a sum of five lac rupees in India.

Bombay was the venue for the celebrations in India. Huge crowd in festive and solemn mood had gathered at Hasanabad to attend the unique occasion on January 19, 1936. When the Imam and Begum arrived at 10.35 a.m. to receive one of the most spectacular ovations from a crowd of over 30,000 Ismailis, every inch of space in the Hasanabad ground was taken up. The Imam took his seat on the gadi embroidered in gold with the coat of arms of his family. To his right sat his mother, Lady Aly Shah, and to his left sat the Begum.

Mr. Ghulam Ali Merchant, Vice-President of the All India Golden Jubilee Committee made his welcome speech, saying: "Most reverently and respectfully I request that Your Highness will allow yourself to be weighed in gold on this happy and auspicious occasion, and accept the gold so weighed a humble token of our love, devotion and gratitude to Your Highness for all the unbounded bounty and benefits that Your Highness' followers have deriving during Your Highness' Imamate for the last 50 years."

The Imam rose from his gadi amidst great cheers and joy of the followers, and moved towards the weighing scale and took his seat on rich soft cushions placed for him. The weighing scale showed 3200 ounces of gold as his weight, valuing about 3,35,000 rupees.

Replying to the address, the Imam said: "I accept with great pleasure the gold my dear spiritual children have offered me and give them my loving and paternal spiritual blessings. I have decided to use the gold for the uplift of the spiritual children and appoint Mr. Ghulam Ali Merchant....to devise the best means of applying not only the income of this gold but the corpus also for intensive uplift work by way of all kinds of scholarships, relief by emigration from congested districts, infant welfare and other beneficial works."

The next Golden Jubilee celebrations at Nairobi, Kenya on March 1, 1936 was also as grand as those in Bombay. Once again the gold was presented to the Imam by the followers as a token of love , and once more the Imam returned the gift for the welfare of the Ismaili community.

Mumtaz Ali Tajddin S. Ali is an popular Ismaili Scholar, Written many books on Islam and Ismailism, Golen Jubilees is taken from Encyclopedia of Ismailism, also read 101 Ismaili Heroes

Don't forget to download Indocquent's free social bookmark utility at http://www.indocquent.com/social_bookmark/social_bookmark_landingpage.html.

Pros and Cons: Wesley Clark as Obama’s Running Mate

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by Jason Easley

In this edition of Pros and Cons we take a look at Wesley Clark whose name often gets mentioned when the subject of Clinton supporters who could be Barack Obama's running mate is discussed. We'll take a look at who Wesley Clark is and what he might bring to the ticket.

Resume : Wesley Clark is a retired Army four star general who spent 34 years in the military. Clark is a graduate of West Point and a Rhodes Scholar. He rose to national prominence as Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997-2000. Clark was the commander of Operation Allied Force during the Kosovo war. Previously Clark was the Director, Strategic Plans and Policy on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1994-1996.
He was also a presidential candidate in 2004.

Clark currently runs a political action committee called wesPAC: Securing America that supports Democratic candidates. He campaigned heavily for Democratic candidates during the 2006 election. Clark has worked for all three cable news networks as a military analyst, and can be seen currently on MSNBC.

Pros to Selecting Clark : Clark is a Son of the South. (He was born in Chicago, but lives in Arkansas). He may be able to appeal to Southern white voters due to this and his national security credentials. Clark has been a highly visible supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2008 primary campaign. He campaigned for her in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Ohio. He even appeared in a Clinton campaign commercial touting her experience. Clark is very popular with Clinton supporters, and would help ease their transition towards supporting Obama in the fall campaign.

Cons to Selecting Clark : In many ways Clark is a less experienced version of Jim Webb. He was at times painful to watch on the stump in 2004, and his knowledge of issues that aren't military based is extremely limited. In 2004, Clark had a respectable finish in New Hampshire, and won Oklahoma, but he wasn't able to do better than third in places like Tennessee and Virginia. For a Southerner, he seems to have very little southern appeal. If national security issues don't dominate the fall campaign, Clark has little to offer the ticket.

Odds of Obama Selecting Clark : With each passing week, it is looking more and more like domestic issues are going to be the focus of the fall campaign. When the political scene was dominated by 9/11 and Iraq, Clark would have been a wise choice. However, Clark doesn't seem to be the kind of running mate who will be out there with Obama talking about the economy in 2008. I have always thought that if Clark wants to be in national politics, he would be best served to run for Congress. He isn't ready for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.


The Choice-O-Meter Says:

OO (2 Os for Wesley Clark)

1 O= No Chance - 10 Os = A Sure Thing

http://www.politicususa.com

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