Understanding the World's Energy Crisis

You saw it in with gas prices in the summer of 2008.When non-renewable resources like oil, gas and coal become more and more scarce; and the requirements from developing nations increase, our demand for energy will quickly overwhelm our supply.We take our uninterrupted supply of energy for grant, even though we know it is not unlimited.Now we have to take steps to deal with an impending energy crisis.

We saw in the summer of 2008 that we can all make changes to conserve gas, so what steps are we taking to conserve power, and even water?What conservation steps are you taking?The consumer is responsible for conserving the resources of the planet.It is not the job of the leaders, global or local, but of us, the consumers.

The gas crisis of 2008 was not the first.We have had three other major energy crises in recent history.The first was the 1973 oil crisis, then the 1979 energy crisis, and finally the 1990 oil price hike.There have also been several regional crises.Prices have increased dramatically over the last half decade, and still some people insist that the energy crisis is a myth.

Is it truly a myth?Will we see the energy crisis in our lifetime?It is more than possible, it's likely.Did you know that we have already used up 50 percent of the world's available oil?At the current rate, we will use up the other 50 percent in the next 32 years.You can bet our rate of consumption will only increase.

The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security states that China and India's use of oil will increase by over 12 percent over the next two decades.The average growth for an industrial nation over the same period is 1 percent.With one-third of the globe's population in those two countries, that kind of increase will have an incredible impact.Our generation will most definitely see an energy crisis in the upcoming years.

How does the world's energy crisis affect you and your energy use at home?The first and most essential step is to recognize the importance of the way we use energy in our lives.We must quit taking our resources for granted. We must find ways to conserve gas, oil, and electricity.Making others aware of the crisis is important as well.

You can take small steps like switching off the car engine at stop lights, joining a carpool, riding a bike, and combining short errands into one trip.Decreasing the use of gas and oil in daily activities is the way to delay or even avert the crisis in the long term.

You can also start looking at alternative energy options.Solar and wind energy are both feasible alternatives that are extremely cost-effective.Make them your answer to the world's energy crisis.

Jeff Fisher is a renewable energy enthusiast. Do-IT-Yourselfer's can harness the renewable energy of the wind and sun to eliminate your power bill. Take Action Today! Read my recommendation at http://attractionmarketingexposed.com/harness-wind-and-solar-power

A Call to American Congress

I would like to personally thank Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME); Arlen Specter (R-PA); Susan Collins (R-ME); and Ben Nelson (D-NE) for their courage and commitment in putting country before party in helping to draft and/or vote for the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. You have done a great service for the American people and have set a worthy example for members of your respective parties.

I speak for myself as well as countless other Americans who would like our Senators and Representatives to know that we don't care at this point about whether our government is big, small; liberal or conservative. We don't care about power plays or lobbying in the hallways of Congress. We don't care about your orchestrated diversions or leaking a scandal that would highlight a political opponent's latest wrongdoing.

We don't care who you are having sex with, and we don't care how many Washington cocktail parties you maneuver around. Sometimes it seems like we do; and the media is convinced that we do because their ratings support that belief. But know this: When it gets right down to it, really we don't.

What we do care about is having a government that works. We want a Congress who is ready willing and able to put personal differences aside, and work together to effect positive change. We want to be assured that the officials whom we have elected, whom we have supported, and whom we now look to for leadership, in Washington and at home, are doing their jobs.

We feel like that's not too much to ask for.

We are realistic. We know that few of our representatives are career economists, and we don't expect everything in this economic recovery plan to come off without a hitch or two.

We are hopeful. We know that with the new Administration comes a new start for a better future; for us, for our children, and for the world.

You in Congress are who you are, but we also are who we are. We are Americans; we are strong and resilient. We are proud to be the citizens who make this country great. And by the way, we as a Nation have gotten through worse than this before; and we as a People will help each other get through this crisis now. Don't you even worry about it, because we will step up; and we will rise to the occasion. That's who we are, and that's what we do. We'll do our part, and by the same token you need to do yours.

We expect that whatever your party affiliation or philosophical beliefs may be; that you, our representatives, lay aside the political gamesmanship and sit down and work together for the positive good of our nation as a whole.

My call to you now, all members of Congress, is this: Let these four Senators be your example as you work with each other to lead your country into our future.

Senator Collins: "These are hard-working American people who need our help, who deserve a stimulus package that is targeted, effective, and bipartisan. This debate is not about Republicans or about Democrats. It's not about our new President winning or losing. It's about helping the American people and surely we ought to be able to come together to advance that goal."

Senator Specter: "My vote was cast recognizing the very substantial political peril that I face. I know that there are many on the Republican political spectrum who do not like the vote. I remember, obviously, the tough primary fight I had in the year 2004. But I felt in the final analysis, given the very severe consequences which might befall the country that my duty was to look out for the public interest and not my own personal political interest. That is why I voted as I did."

Senator Snowe: "Today, Washington sent a strong signal to the American people that this Congress is, indeed, committed to getting our economy back on the road to recovery," said. "Facing one of the worst economic downturns in our nation's history, inaction was not an option."

Senator Nelson: "The time is now to begin turning this recession toward recovery. Congress cannot wait another three or six months to see if economic conditions worsen, for by then it could be too late and we could be in a depression from which it could take years to overcome. Now is time to provide the tools the American people will use with creativity and drive to rebuild the economy and return us to prosperity. The $789 billion economic recovery plan before us providing job creation and tax cuts for millions of Americans has the best chance to do that, I believe."

Thank you from all of us, and thank you again personally from me: Senator Collins, Senator Specter, Senator Snowe, and Senator Nelson. Job well done.

Kathi Carbone

Tips on Buying Authentic & Exclusive Leather Handbags

Designer, exclusive collection of leather handbags are marked as expensive ranges of handbags. Hence those repertoire of handbags are limited to a plush class of women from upper class of urban society. However, this is not true, these exclusive ranges of handbags can be affordable and accessible and can be absolutely made of genuine leather too. Here are some tips given on how and from where to buy those leather handbags with assurance quality and from designers' store. Using these tips you can save from being cheated counterfeit handbag company and save your money too to be spent on exaggerated price tags and can enhance pleasure of shopping genuine leather handbags.

First of all, leather handbags aficionados can opt for auction sites to get leather handbags at their own range of prices. Plenteous websites are operating and exuding designer handbags allowing people to choose and bid online. These auction sites showcase top quality bags from top designers' boutiques and allow people to start bidding at extremely low ranges. Online shoppers are given with complete security for placing their bids through these sites.

Another way is to ensure savings and quality while buying leather handbags is to define how much you are willing or ready to pay for them. Especially, if you are buying a bag from auction sites, you must know when to stop bidding as per your affordable level or you may end up going overboard due to lack of planning and over indulgence for your rampant fetish for leather purses.

Buyers should also check on sellers by taking information on them to know how fair they are in fixing prices of their leather handbags. It is better to deal with those sellers who is reputed and certified member of reputed auction sites. Buyers should also check on customers' feedbacks on sellers to ensure they are dealing with credible leather handbags sellers.

Matthew Watson is an expert writer in the field of online shopping and product descriptions. He has been providing excellent tips and ideas on online shopping for quite some time now. At present he is writing dedicatedly for a popular online shopping portal, http://www.usunlocked.com/, offering Mobile Accessories, Online Books Shopping, Online Shoes Store for perfect experience of shopping in America.

No funds for military families after 2 years

Two years ago, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed off on a special taxpayer-funded assistance program for military families, but not a single dollar has been disbursed, according to the Independent Weekly of Lafayette, La.

The law gives oversight of the program – the Louisiana Military Family Assistance Fund – to the Department of Social Services, but the agency has not given out any money and missed its Jan. 1 deadline to file a report to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget.

The DSS still cannot point to any benchmarks or timeline for the program, the Independent Weekly reported.

The program is designed to award need-based grants to families of Louisiana National Guard and reserve forces called to active duty since 9/11 and to guard units that deployed for natural disasters such as hurricanes.

The funds come from private sources and taxpayers who opt to designate all or part of their returns to the program, which provides emergency cash to families who have lost a source of income due to military service.

Allotments may be as small as money for rent, and larger amounts are available for casualty cases. A lump sum of $2,500 is to be offered to the families of soldiers missing or killed in action or taken prisoner.

More than 11,800 men and women are eligible for the program along with their estimated 12,000 dependents.

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Can all the Conspiracy theorists stop and think for a minute?

Patrick:

You guys have come up with many reasons why the 9/11 was a conspiracy. And many were good ideas, but there are a few major flaws. The biggest of which is the money. Conspiracy theorists say that Bush planed, and executed 9/11 as an excuse to go to war. The question i have for you is why send the economy into a downward spiral, one that we still haven't recovered from, right before we go to war? We need money to fight a war, right? It just doesn't make sense.
Then you also need to look at the effect. When the planes hit the country united. but it quickly died away. there are plenty of other targets that could have been hit that would have had the entire country, and maybe the entire world up in arms. could you imagine the up-roar that would have ensued if the planes had hit a school? I can guarantee that had it had been a school, the vast majority of the planet would have backed the U.S. Now if a 22 year old collage student can realize all this why wouldn't the Government.

Read and vote on Y! Answers

The new global sex trade

Want a sexual slave?

That is the question hundreds of thousands answer each year, as they purchase a child or young person from traffickers in a multibillion-dollar international business known as the global sex trade.

When in many countries a young woman can be kidnapped for $500 and yield $250,000 annually from sexual servitude, it doesn't take much economic ingenuity to understand why corrupt capitalists crave some buy-in to this repulsive form of commerce.

These victims of sexual slavery come from some of the most well-known sexually trafficked areas in the world, including Cambodia, Thailand, Latin America, Eastern Europe (countries like Romania, Lithuania, Albania, Moldova and Ukraine), Russia and even Africa.

The U.S government reports, "Of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people trafficked across international borders annually, 80 percent of victims are female and up to 50 percent are minors. Hundreds of thousands of these women and children are used in prostitution each year."

And to whom are these sexual servants being sold? Those in nearly every country on the planet, including Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Greece, Great Britain, Canada and even America!

How does one become a sexual slave?

Traffickers begin by enticing women with jobs (like housekeeping, being a nanny, waitressing, etc.), but end up turning these employment opportunities into forced prostitution. Other victims are literally abducted from their homes or off the streets and imported to countries under the force of heavy-handed intermediary agents.

America's not the only one with leaky borders

How do traffickers and their victims make it across international borders? Look at our own country! If drug lords and illegal aliens stream across, how difficult can it be for sexual traffickers? There are endless avenues to get into most countries, from using authentic travel papers to being smuggled in on trains, planes, automobiles and boats.

After two years of investigation and interviewing traffickers and their victims, journalist Victor Malarek documented his findings in his book, "The Natashas: Inside the New Global Sex Trade." Malarek also commented to PBS:

The smuggling [routes] around the world were established many decades ago for weapons and drugs. It's far easier to smuggle human beings. The Bohemian borders around the European Union are very easy to cross. You cross the Danube in narrow areas or on boats, you go over the mountains and get yourself into Kosovo and Bosnia into Albania, and you [go] across the Adriatic, and ... you get yourself into Italy. ... Once they're in the European Union, it's just a free-for-all.
You go to a country like ... Israel. It's hugely secure. How in heaven's [name] do 5,000 women from Moldova, Romania and Ukraine get into Israel? ... Some of them [go] overland through the Sinai Desert after landing in Cairo, almost like a biblical trek for them, scary biblical trek.

Then there are all kinds of ways that you can get into North America: under student visas, under temporary work orders, under tourism visas. You can get into Canada by taking a boat. A lot of these freighters come over, and in the back of them are girls and there are women, so when they park their little boats ... in Vancouver or in Halifax or Montreal late at night, they're taken off, and they're here. ...

Chuck Norris

read full story at wnd

PC Run Amok!!

An Ohio library dropped a policy that barred a public interest group from holding a forum on traditional marriage without also inviting someone to argue for "same-sex marriage."

The agreement by the Newton Falls Library Board of Trustees settled a lawsuit filed by Florida-based Liberty Counsel, which applied to the library to hold a meeting last spring that would include prayer and Scripture reading.

The library denied Liberty Counsel's application, citing a policy that said, "If a program deals with a controversial subject, then all sides of the issue must be presented."

Who in the world made up THAT law!?

The policy made the room available to "nonprofit organizations" for "programs of a civic, cultural or educational nature."

Liberty Counsel said it requested the room for specific dates at the end of May and on June 6 or 13, but library director Kerry McCrone denied the application May 23.

Along with notice of the denial, McCrone sent a copy of the policy, highlighting the statement that if a program deals with a controversial subject, all sides of the issue must be presented.

With the settlement, the library has agreed to remove the requirement.

Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, said the old policy violated the First Amendment's right of free speech.

"Under the former policy, Liberty Counsel would have been required to invite a proponent of same-sex marriage before we could address our viewpoint that marriage is the union of one man and one woman," he said. "Such a policy invites dispute and ends up censoring the speaker."

This is so ridulous it's not funny any more. Who are these people to tell ANYONE they may not practice their rights under the First Amendment without someone there to argue the counter-point of whatever subject a person chooses to speak about. What's next, home monitoring of private conversations between family members? Referess throwing flags for PC violations? What a nutty world we live in. It's sad when people have to file lawsuits to get permission to speak their minds about anything contrary to the "polictically correct" agenda in America.

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Saturday Night Live Reject....

Alan Skorski, author of "...Pants on Fire: How Al Franken Lies, Smears and Deceives," turns the tables on Franken, a self-described "truth teller," setting out to prove not only are conservatives and Republicans not the demons the Air America host characterizes them to be, but that it is Franken himself who is "shamelessly deceptive and using the very tactics he accuses his targets of employing."

Saturday Night Live is O-V-E-R, Al. It's time to grow up and G-E-T R-E-A-L! All of your colleagues have grown up, moved on, and left you behind. Get a grip, for heaven's sake!

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Alan Skorski has researched the facts regarding the allegations in Franken's last two books, monitored his daily radio show, spoken with people cited and referenced in Franken's books, and exchanged approximately 30 e-mails with Franken in order to provide readers with an accurate insight into how Franken thinks and operates. What Skorski finds is something very different from what Franken claims, and he concludes that, unlike many of the petty "lies" Franken writes about in his books—whether Bill O'Reilly's Inside Edition show won a Peabody or a Polk award or whether Ann Coulter said that she and Franken were "friendly"—"...Pants on Fire" reveals that Franken himself regularly lies, smears, and distorts what others say and do, ultimately discrediting himself as a "truth teller."

Indeed, according to Skorski, while Franken has called many people—from Rush Limbaugh and Brit Hume to President Bush —a "liar," "hypocrite," "cheater," "lazy," "shameless," and/or "dishonest," "...Pants on Fire" amply illustrates not only that many of his claims are false but that Franken employs the very tactics he accuses the right of using.

Mexico Recalls Ambassador from Venezuela

Mexico recalled its ambassador from Venezuela on Monday after Caracas said it would withdraw its top diplomat instead of apologizing after President Hugo Chavez warned Mexican leader Vicente Fox: "Don't mess with me, sir, because you'll get stung."

Fox said in a television interview that he would meet with Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez to decide what to do next.

Tensions between Fox and Chavez spilled over after this month's Summit of the Americas in Argentina, where Fox defended a U.S.-backed proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Americas while Chavez proclaimed the idea dead.

Well, this is nice. The two Latin American boneheads can't get along with each. If this keeps up maybe there will be a nice little war between these two countries. We could call it, Rumble in the Jungle II (remember Ali and Foreman?). If Mexico and that other country, oh yeah, Venezuela did go to war, would Fox start drafting unemployed Mexicans for his army instead of smuggling them wholesale into the United States? One can only hope.

BTW, Chavez is right, The Free Trade Agreement should be scrapped. It's ruining our economy.
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Song About Picking Cotton Pulled From School Concert

A song about people picking cotton was pulled from a middle school concert in suburban Detroit after a black parent complained that it glorifies slavery.

I could have gone the rest of the week without hearing about something that "offended" somebody. And of course, since the "offended" party is black they'll get their way about what it is their "offended" about because white people don't have the guts to stand up and tell them to go straight to hell like they should. That would be "politically incorrect" and it might hurt the poor "offended" person's little feelings, wouldn't it?

BTW, you "offended" idiots out there--shut up, get a life, and stop your incessant whining! It gets on people's nerves. You dig, bro?

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Report Alleges Secret CIA Network Of Jails

The Spanish National Court received a report alleging an airport on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca was part of a secret network of jails used by the CIA for the covert transfers of terror suspects.

The U.S. government has been criticized by human rights groups for practicing "extraordinary rendition" - sending suspected terrorists to foreign countries, where they are detained, interrogated and subjected to possible ill-treatment. By conducting interrogations off US soil, certain prisoner rights do not have to be enforced.

This doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. If we are to defend our country against terrorist we can't have the likes of Kennedy, Boxer, Kerry, or any other bleeding heart liberal saying we have to serve milk and cookies to known murderers and give them a hug to burp them. If the CIA needs to get these guys alone, so be it. It's better than what the terrorist did to caputured Europeans in Iraq--slicing their heads off and video taping it for the world to see. There are times when you fight fire with fire and leave your humanity back in camp. This is the way of all wars, not just this one. We'd be better off listening to the ones on the scene than giving an ear to those at home with their feet propped up drinking martinis in front of the fireplace and bellyaching that the world just doesn't suit them today. It must be nice to be a rich liberal jackass.

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Can I Stand the Strain?

Jackson moves to own island in Bahrain

Michael Jackson has shelled out £860,000 for his own island paradise in Bahrain.

The King of Pop, who quit the US after being cleared of child sex abuse in June, is expected to live on the quarter-acre site permanently.

The secluded area is situated on Bahrain's Amwaj Islands, a project of three man-made islands that has taken five years to complete.

Jackson's purchase includes two separate villas with seaside views, the New York Post reported. The affluent island features top restaurants, a private hospital and school, parks, golf courses and private boat moorings.

Jackson has been living in Bahrain as a guest of the country's royal family and has kept a low profile except for several trips to London.

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