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In the early nineties I spent some time in Untango and I remember hearing about "jin" going inside people and demanding stuff almost constantly.

Well let's see what I have in here wallet cell phone diary pens (2) orange highlighter (1) keys hand lotion sheer lip liner + gloss gloves ...and some old papers I am not sure why I still have them.

....Scam letter that is. From: Mr. James Dube Department of Minerals and Energy, Republic of South Africa Email: james.dube@hotmail.com Hello, With great pleasure I write you this letter on behalf of my colleagues. I got your information from a member of the South African Export Promotion Council (SAEPC) who was with the Government delegation on a trip to overseas country for bilateral conference talks to encourage foreign investors. I have decided to seek a confidential co-operation with you in the execution of the deal here under for the benefit of all parties and hope you will keep it confidential because of the nature of this business. In the Department of Minerals & Energy where I work as a Director of Audit and Project Implementation and with the co-operation of three other top officials, we have in our possession an overdue payment funds. The said fund represent certain percentage of the total contract value executed on behalf of my Department by a foreign contracting firm, which we the officials over-invoiced to the amount of US$28.500,000.00 (Twenty Eight Million Five Hundred Thousand US Dollars) though the actual contract cost has been paid to the original contractor, leaving the excess balance unclaimed. Since the present Government is determined to pay all foreign contractor's debts owned in order to maintain good relationship with foreign governments and non-governmental agencies. We intend to include our bills for approvals with the Department of Finance and the Contracts Award and Payments Committee. So we are seeking your assistance to front as beneficiary of the unclaimed funds, since we are not allowed to operate foreign accounts. Details and change of beneficiary information upon application for claim to reflect payment and approvals will be secured on behalf of you/your company. I have the authority of my partners involved to propose that should you be willing to assist us in this transaction your share as compensation will be so negotiated and agreed upon by both parties, before further details will change hands to enhance our primary objective. The mode of sharing after a successful transfer of the money into your account, shall be 70% to my colleagues and I, for the role you will be expected to play in this deal, we have agreed to give you 25% of the total sum and 5% for the expenses we are going to encounter by the two parties at the course of this transaction. The business is completely safe and secure, provided you treat it with up most confidentiality. It does not matter whether you/your company does contract projects as a transfer of powers will be secured in favor of you/your company to settle any legality. Also, your area of specialization is not a hindrance to the successful execution of this transaction. I have reposed my confidence in you and hope that you will not disappoint us. I expect your urgent response to enable us conclude this transaction urgently without any hitch. Kindly notify me via my email for further details upon your acceptance of this proposal with email account above. Thanks for your co-operation. Regards, Mr. James Dube.

Yeah W f^cked up so bad the nation looked to the black guy for leadership.

Lugar has already ruled out being part of Obama admin. I would like to see Susan Rice as the next Sec of State, Powell for Education, Tim Kain for Attorney General and Robert Kennedy Jr for EPA Also am crossing my finger for for Jess Jackson Jr for Obama's senate seat.

Actually republicans were the permanent minority when it comes to congress until 1994 after Bill and Hillary's health care debacle. And for now it looks like they are back to their old place unless Obama screws up bad enough in his first two years.

Happy B-day SS

^^I don't think I support it at all - I mean I don't have to make that decision as I live no where near California but find it interesting people who were discriminated against before are the most ardent supporters of taking other peoples rights. btw Obama will win in a landslide close to 400 EV

I know we have some Californians here and am wondering where Maryooley stands on the proposition 8 issue. Are they for or against gay marriage? I know religion wise it's not allowed but do we have the right to define who people can cannot marry? I always thought we have individual rights to do as we wish and deal with the consequences in our afterlife. Anyway it's interesting that according to most polls African Americans are against it 3 to 1 and because of the historic nature of this election if Prop 8 becomes law it will probably be because of it's huge support among blacks.

The New McCarthyism By Scott Horton The last weeks of every presidential campaign I can remember bring out the crazies. Candidates are reviled as “racists,” “Nazis,” “Communists,” and the like. But this year the process has gotten nuttier and more malicious than usual. Perhaps it is a sign of desperation, given that polling does not suggest a close campaign, and a party now long entrenched appears to be poised for a swift kick in the behind—for the second time running. Still, I was amused at how absurd some of this is. The National Review is worth examining regularly these days–it has turned into something of a circular firing squad. I used to read and love it back in the heyday of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s editorship. It was home base for a certain rigorous, philosophically based conservatism that valued the classics. I search in vain through National Review today for any trace of the erudition and intellectual integrity that Buckley brought to the publication. And I suspect that Buckley himself was unhappy with the magazine’s course in his final years. Two years ago, I spoke at a conservative, religiously affiliated college in the South and discovered that my predecessor at the lectern, just the night before, had been Buckley. When I asked how his talk had gone, my faculty handler told me it had been a surprising experience. Buckley spoke at some length about the mistakes that the Bush Administration had made, starting with the Iraq War. When one student observed that his comments were rather at odds with the views that appeared in National Review, Buckley replied, “Yes. We have grown distant.” In the current issue of National Review, Andrew McCarthy continues his campaign to link the Democratic nominee to various and sundry Hyde Park radicals. This time it is “PLO advisor turned University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi,” who now heads the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Columbia University. Khalidi, we learn, makes a habit of justifying and supporting the work of terrorists and is “a former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat.” And then we learn that this same Khalidi knows Obama and that his children even babysat for Obama’s kids! This doesn’t sound much like the Rashid Khalidi I know. I’ve followed his career for many years, read his articles and books, listened to his presentations, and engaged him in discussions of politics, the arts, and history. In fact, as McCarthy’s piece ran, I was midway through an advance copy of Khalidi’s new book Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. (I’ll be reviewing it next month–stay tuned.) Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies. In a sense, Khalidi’s formula for solving the Middle East crisis has not been radically different from George W. Bush’s: both believe in American values and approaches. However, whereas Bush believes these values can be introduced in the wake of bombs and at the barrel of a gun, Khalidi disagrees. He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles. Khalidi is also a Palestinian American. There is no doubt in my mind that it is solely that last fact that informs McCarthy’s ignorant and malicious rants. McCarthy states that Khalidi “founded” the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). In fact, he neither founded it nor has anything to do with it. But AAAN is not, as McCarthy suggests, a political organization. It is a social-services organization, largely funded by the state of Illinois and private foundations, that provides support for English-language training, citizenship classes, after-school and summer programs for schoolchildren, women’s shelters, and child care among Chicago’s sizable Arab community (and for others on the city’s impoverished South Side). Does McCarthy consider this sort of civic activism objectionable? Since it was advocated aggressively by President Bush–this is “compassionate conservativism” in action–such an objection would be interesting. Nor was Khalidi ever a spokesman for the PLO, though that was reported in an erroneous column by the New York Times’s Tom Friedman in 1982. That left me curious about the final and most dramatic accusation laid at Khalidi’s doorstep: that the Khalidis babysat for the Obamas. Was it true? I put the question to Khalidi. “No, it is not true,” came the crisp reply. Somehow that was exactly the answer I expected. Of course, Khalidi has been involved in Palestinian causes. McCarthy ought to ask John McCain about that, because McCain and Khalidi appear to have some joint interests, and that fact speaks very well of both of them. Indeed, the McCain–Khalidi connections are more substantial than the phony Obama–Khalidi connections McCarthy gussies up for his article. The Republican party’s congressionally funded international-networking organization, the International Republican Institute–long and ably chaired by John McCain and headed by McCain’s close friend, the capable Lorne Craner–has taken an interest in West Bank matters. IRI funded an ambitious project, called the Palestine Center, that Khalidi helped to support. Khalidi served on the Center’s board of directors. The goal of that project, shared by Khalidi and McCain, was the promotion of civic consciousness and engagement and the development of democratic values in the West Bank. Of course, McCarthy is not interested in looking too closely into the facts, because they would not serve his shrill partisan objectives. I have a suggestion for Andy McCarthy and his Hyde Park project. If he really digs down deep enough, he will come up with a Hyde Park figure who stood in constant close contact with Barack Obama and who, unlike Ayers and Khalidi, really did influence Obama’s thinking about law, government, and policy. He is to my way of thinking a genuine radical. His name is Richard Posner, and he appears to be the most frequently and positively cited judge and legal academic in… National Review. Harper's Magazine

^^ What about you lady, last I checked you lived in a battlegroun state get to voting and knocking on door dee maxaa sugee PS everyone should get sample ballot online before going to vote - I voted early and there was a constitutional change on the ballet that I haven't heard of before and it took me full 5 or 6 minutes deciding whether to vote yes or no. in the end I figured I didn't want anyone messing with the state constitution but it would have been nice to get info before hand.

What a waste!!!

Congratulations Ibti am so happy for you.

Originally posted by xiinfaniin: @Kathleen I would’ve dismissed this article if I didn’t know Kathleen is one of conservative’s leading intellectuals. It’s not only the liberals who noticed how Sarah attempted to wink her way out to victory the other night when she debated with Joe B! She is not considered "conservative" by the party faithfull anymore - it was affectively over the day she asked Gov. Palin to step aside and let someone else take over as VP candidate.

^^ Congrats bro - my parents keep on insisting I find me a job there too, except I can't separate my self from the good old u.s.a

The U.S education system is lacking in many ways the least of which is geography which by the way is not even offered in high schools I think its part of social studies now. But a new study found that the U.S is not only behind the developed nations when it comes to basic reading, math and science but it has a culture of discouraging students from pursuing higher education in those subjects even when they are highly talented. The United States is failing to develop the math skills of both girls and boys, especially among those who could excel at the highest levels, a new study asserts, and girls who do succeed in the field are almost all immigrants or the daughters of immigrants from countries where mathematics is more highly valued. The study suggests that while many girls have exceptional talent in math — the talent to become top math researchers, scientists and engineers — they are rarely identified in the United States. A major reason, according to the study, is that American culture does not highly value talent in math, and so discourages girls — and boys, for that matter — from excelling in the field. The study will be published Friday in Notices of the American Mathematical Society. “We’re living in a culture that is telling girls you can’t do math — that’s telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math,” said the study’s lead author, Janet E. Mertz, an oncology professor at the University of Wisconsin, whose son is a winner of what is viewed as the world’s most-demanding math competitions. “Kids in high school, where social interactions are really important, think, ‘If I’m not an Asian or a nerd, I’d better not be on the math team.’ Kids are self selecting. For social reasons they’re not even trying.” Math Skills Suffer in U.S., Study Finds

^^ and to think my guy voted for that stup!d FISA bill - he almost lost my vote but than I snapped out of it can't allow the republicans another 4 yrs.

^ LOL of course I am unofficially representing the campaign on SOL

^ ^ Actually he has big Muslim outreach program and it's mostly under the radar but today even the RNC was crying foul claiming the Obama campaign is meeting with CAIR and ISNA which of course according to the republicans are terrorist sympathizers.

I wasted my popcorn on this debate last night waiting for someone to show this woman's shallowness. In the end Gwen Ifil was a dissapointment, I expected her to ask follow up questions and demand an answer to her questions which Gov. Palin effectively avoided whenever the question didn't jive with her talking points. Of course, anyone looking for substance will tell you Sen. Biden won the debate but no one can deny Ms barbie doll looked confident while bull sh!ting. ============================================= Klein: Palin Was Fine, But This Debate Was No Contest By Joe Klein She did fine, I suppose. She was animated and confident. She displayed an ability, for the first time since her convention speech, to repeat with a fair amount of credibility, the formulations that her handlers had given her. You knew she was well prepared when practically the first words out of her mouth were, "Go to a kids' soccer game..." She had that folksy thing down—although I did notice, watching the squiggly lines down at the bottom of the CNN screen, that when she tried to get cutesy with her folksiness, it didn't work. She also was allowed to do fine by Joe Biden, who never really challenged her—his criticisms were always directed at John McCain—and never exposed the obvious shallowness of her knowledge on most topics. (He must have been sorely tempted to correct Palin when she called David McKiernan, the commanding general in Afghanistan, "McLellan," but Biden was hard-wired—I imagine his debate prep was a form of electric shock therapy—not to correct her, attack her, disrespect her.) Indeed, Sarah Palin's high-energy performance in the vice-presidential debate was the most glaring demonstration—since George W. Bush's performances in 2000—of how little you can get away with knowing and still survive one of these things, especially if the rules limit the cross-examination as severely as they did in this debate. Her relentless opacity was impressive. She refused to answer the questions where she hadn't been prepped with answers and when Biden pointed out that an early question had been on deregulation not taxes, she flashed: "I may not answer the questions the way you and the moderator want to hear, but I'm gonna talk straight to the American people." Talk straight she didn't, with only a few exceptions. She talked talking points. And when the talking points concerned areas where she didn't know diddly, she didn't talk them very convincingly. Indeed, there were times I got the distinct impression that she didn't understand the points she was talking about (on the vice president's constitutional powers, for example). Joe Biden, by contrast, demonstrated a real knowledge of the issues in question. He made several verbal fumbles—it was Syria, not Hizballah, that left Lebanon—and at times he lapsed into legi-speak, even using plague words like "amendments" and "Liheap" (the winter heating oil assistance program for poor people). But his was a solid, informed and restrained performance—although his best moments came near the end of the debate (when much of America had turned to the baseball playoffs or reruns of their favorite sitcoms on cable). He was genuinely moving when he talked about being a single parent after the death of his wife (he almost began to weep, but held it together); in fact, that moment was more real than anything Palin said all night. He also closed with a devastating point: McCain was, sure enough, a maverick on some things, but not on any of the issues that really mattered in this election—and he listed those issues, and where McCain stood on them, to great effect. It was striking to me—for the second time in two debates—that the Democrat got much the better of the argument on Iraq, especially if you watched the squiggly focus group lines on CNN: it seems clear that people just want the war to end. Biden did marginally better than Obama on the substance of the issue, pointing out that the Maliki government agrees with Obama, not McCain, on the timetable to withdraw U.S. troops (which Obama failed to mention last Friday). The fact that Palin made it through the debate without running off the stage shouting, "I can't do this!" should not obscure the fact that there was only one person tonight whom anyone with any sense—even John McCain, I imagine—would trust as President. Biden's performance was strong and, happily, gimmick free. He used no gotcha soundbites, no consultant-driven silliness—a fact driven home by the lameness of Palin's snark lines like, "Say it ain't so, Joe" and—pace, Gipper—"There you go again, talking about the past." Palin's problem, and McCain's, is that the recent past is crucial in this election. Bush's decisions over the past eight years—to go to war in Iraq, to neglect the war in Afghanistan, to aggrandize the rich and neglect the middle class—created the dreadful moment this country faces right now, and people know that. Fearful for their futures and the nation's, they seem to be looking for something different—and that something involves steadiness, knowledge and some clear ideas about what to do going forward, qualities that Sarah Palin did not display tonight. What she did show was some folksy charm and some energy—qualities that might get her selected for Dancing With the Stars, if not Jeopardy. But that's not enough to change the trajectory of this race, especially since nothing that was said in this debate will be remembered, or remarked upon, a week from now. TIME

^^Of course Obama won the debate and most importantly he won the spin after the debate. Yeah I wish he was bit more aggressive in taking on the old "POW" but ultimately I think he more than held his own. And McCain's litany of "Sen. Obama doesn't understand" just fell flat especially, since Obama clearly displayed his depth and knowledge off all the issues. WRONG on IRAQ

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: Mock the Vote With just five weeks left until Election Day, our favorite pundits discuss the power of Sarah Palin, why TV news is about as credible as Muzak, and whether Barack Obama is going to be ''sworn in on a gay baby'' By Josh Wolk In the midst of re-creating the controversial New Yorker cover illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama for the cover photo that graces this week's print edition of Entertainment Weekly, Jon Stewart stops briefly to pose a taste question. As he stands by the catering table in ''secret Muslim'' garb, he ponders, ''Would it be weird to be dressed like this and have a bagel, salmon, and a schmear?'' Pseudo-blowhard Stephen Colbert has his own worries. Striking his best Michelle-as-Black-Panther pose, he glances at the original cartoon and realizes that he's ''hippier'' than the potential First Lady. Gesturing at his own waist, he moans, ''I could drop a baby like a peasant.'' Other than that, though, their worries are few. Both of their Comedy Central shows just received an Emmy (The Daily Show won best Variety, Music, or Comedy Series, while The Colbert Report took home a best writing trophy), and they have five more weeks of an election battle starring three men and an Alaskan moose-skinner that has given the satirists more fodder than an infinite number of Dick Cheneys shooting an infinite number of friends in the face. We sat down with the comedians for a provocative talk about the political landscape, the way they (and other, more traditional media outlets) cover it, and whether or not we'll ever see the alleged ''change'' we've been promised by every candidate. ''Do you mean change we need, or change we can believe in?'' asks Stewart. ''Any change is as good as a vacation at this point,'' says Colbert, who set his conservative TV pundit character aside for the chat. ''I don't know if you've paid much attention to the past eight years, but it has been a s---burger supreme. If somebody gives me an empty burger, it's better than eating s---.'' ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Forget the two presidential candidates: The most prominent person in this election right now is Sarah Palin. With the attention she's getting, you'd think she was running for president. JON STEWART: Everyone likes new and shiny. We're bored. What's great about that is [Democratic VP candidate Joe] Biden is an absolutely eccentric character. That's how powerful Palin's story is — it has cast the first African-American presidential nominee, the oldest [non-incumbent] presidential nominee, and a really wild cork vice presidential candidate completely out of the picture. The press is 6-year-olds playing soccer; nobody has a position, it's just ''Where's the ball? Where's the ball? Sarah Palin has the ball!'' [Mimes a mob running after her.] Because they can only cover one thing. Why do you think some people embraced her as a folk hero? STEWART: I keep hearing that she's ''like us.'' There's this idea that people who hunt and have ''good'' values are somehow this mythological American; I don't know who ''this'' person is, I've never met them. She is no more typical ''us'' than I am, than Obama is, than McCain is, than Mr. T is. If there is something quintessentially or authentically American about her, I sort of feel like, you know what? You ''good values people'' have had the country for eight years, and done an unbelievably sh--ty job. Let's find some bad values people and give them a shot, maybe they'll have a better take on it. NEXT PAGE: ''Within the American political system now, authenticity — and apparently mediocrity — are the manna that the populace feeds upon. To set somebody up as if they're above us, and elitist...my God, you couldn't do anything worse.''