// Popular Posts

// Tracker

See All
TypeTitleRepliesViewsLast Post
textCain Wreck
by stephley
52159
Dec 2 2011 - 12:31pm
by stephley
textCain's Defenders Going Overboard
by stephley
49154
Nov 10 2011 - 5:16pm
by stephley
textObama Picks Consumers Over Bipartisanship
by stephley
47128
Jan 8 2012 - 8:29am
by stephley
textWhat Bush Understood About the Middle East-- That Obama Still Does Not Get
by Grandpa
44136
Nov 3 2011 - 3:07pm
by Grandpa
textMen Sex and Power
by stephley
43105
Nov 10 2011 - 9:05pm
by stephley
textEnough is Enough
by stephley
3696
Nov 2 2011 - 12:39am
by stephley
textIs That Scientific Heretic a Genius—or a Loon?
by Grandpa
36114
Nov 16 2011 - 6:45am
by Grandpa
textEconomic Unfairness of Greater Concern than Over-regulation
by stephley
35100
Jan 21 2012 - 3:08pm
by stephley
textWell said young man
by Grandpa
35117
Dec 5 2011 - 6:02am
by Grandpa
textLegendary investor to Obama: Is all this class warfare rhetoric really necessary?
by Grandpa
3498
Dec 5 2011 - 4:13pm
by Grandpa

// Latest Posts

See Latest
Grandpa Thank God For Humanitarian Bombs? Jan 27, 2012 11:28 AM Thank God For Humanitarian Bombs? Walter Russell Mead Each day that goes by gives the White House more reason to regret its Libyan adventure. The overthrow of Gaddafi was a good thing, but from both the humanitarian and strategic points of view, nothing has changed. The war continues to look at best like a diversion, at worst as if the US fell for a cynical French ploy to get oil in a way that damaged our long term strategic interests. Scattered reports of torture in Libyan jails and unrest in Libyan towns are beginning to coalesce into a picture of the exciting new reality created by last year’s humanitarian war-to-protect.  If Amnesty International knows what it is talking about, Libyans are being “tortured to death” by the people we saved from Gaddafi and installed in power. Surprisingly, the Wilsonian hawks who gave us this inspiring policy haven’t yet sent a new barrage of airstrikes to stop the new round of brutality and bloodshed. A police SUV burns in Bayda, Libya, during the first scattered protests Meanwhile for Russia, the “lessons of Libya” are clear.  Russia’s abstention on the Libya resolution at the UN Security Council extended a mantle of legitimacy over the Libyan bombs; this is now seen as a strategic mistake that must not be repeated over Syria.  Russian oil companies have been heavily punished by the new Libyan government which instead rewarded its western backers with fat contracts. Russian arms deliveries to Syria and diplomatic support to the embattled government in Damascus — along with closer alignment with Iran — have been facilitated by Russia’s intense reaction to the Libyan misadventure. In Russia, the belief that the West cynically uses internal instability as an excuse to replace unfriendly regimes with compliant puppets (often no more “democratic” or “humane” than the previous thugs) has become dogma, and this western propensity is now seen as a national security threat to Russia and the friendly regimes on its frontiers. Libya didn’t cause this perception, but it has strengthened it, and considerably strengthened Russia’s determination to resist: this week, the Kremlin announced its intention to veto any Security Council resolution calling for Bashar al-Assad to step down. The NGO activists and groups the humanitarian hawks represent and hope to bolster have also been set back by the war.  The perception that the US and the Europeans promote instability and protest in hostile countries and then use those protestors and the resulting instability to advance their interests has been strengthened by Libya and its aftermath. The Egyptian crackdown on NGOs and the current refusal to allow US citizens connected to them to leave is yet another sign that the NGO world of civic activism is going to face more determined government push back around the world. Without advancing the cause of world freedom in any significant way, the Libyan intervention was a wake up call to the forces of darkness, and led them to conclude that while President Obama may be a kinder and gentler face, the Obama administration is no less committed to a project of ideological transformation than the Bush administration was in its first term. As predicted, the Libyan intervention has strengthened Assad and ensured a longer period of delay and hesitation before any possible intervention in Syria.  The tortures taking place in Libyan jails today and the blood flowing in Syrian streets cannot be separated from the humanitarian bombs about which the “duty to protect” crowd rejoiced so naively last spring. Assad & Putin: best friends forever Meanwhile, many analysts agree that the war in Libya, brilliant and strategic though it appeared to the White House at the time, may be making our options regarding Iran more limited. The west made a deal with Gaddafi: stop your nuclear program and we will treat you with respect.  He kept his end of the bargain and we dispatched him to his eternal reward.  What assurances can we now give the mullahs that would induce them to believe that they will be safe without nukes? This makes it less likely that President Obama’s approach to Iran, infinitely more important for the future of US foreign policy than anything that has happened or could happen in Libya, will succeed.  There is no pledge Obama could give the mullahs that can offer them the same protection that a bomb would give them; the “duty to protect” crowd does not believe it needs to honor any sort of pre-existing pledge to a leader it decides is “bad,” while reserving the right to strike anyone, anywhere, anytime, should a moral mood befall us. For Iran, the lesson of Libya is that the West will tell you anything to get you to give up the quest for nuclear weapons, but none of the beautiful pledges can be trusted.  At the first sign of weakness, they will intervene to overthrow you. Thank goodness the Bush crowd and those awful neocons are gone. To be fair to the White House, and to the neocons for that matter, American foreign policy is hard.  We are doomed to play two incompatible roles in the world.  On the one hand, we are a status quo power that wants to keep the world stably operating within a set of legal norms and practical arrangements. We want treaties to be honored, boundaries respected, and disagreements to be settled in peace. But at the same time, we are an even more revolutionary country today than we were in 1776.  The political ideas that form us, and the economic system which makes us strong, are fundamentally at war with the political, economic and even religious ideas that hold sway in much of the world. There is no perfectly harmonious way to balance the two sides of America’s presence in the world.  There is no glitch-free path down which our foreign policy can smoothly glide to untroubled success.  Contradictions, mishaps, mixed signals and unintended consequences are an inevitable and irreducible element of American foreign policy even when planned and executed at the highest level, and even a great foreign policy president and secretary of state will have a bumpy ride. Critics of an administration’s foreign policy often judge its success or failure by the bumpiness of the ride.  That’s a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt’s foreign policy in his second term was pretty smooth, but only because the US sat passively as Nazi Germany, Fascist Japan and Stalin’s USSR cooked up the most dangerous global challenge we have ever faced. Given the state of US public opinion at the time (humanitarian legalists and crackpot isolationists were stinking up the place with bad ideas) there might not have been much FDR could do, but a bumpier foreign policy would have been better for the country. It should also be remembered that on the whole, even taking misadventures like Vietnam, Iraq and — in its small and low-rent way — Libya, into account, Washington’s failures to act have been much worse for the world (and the US) than even the most misguided steps we have taken.  There is reason to argue that in American foreign policy the tie should go to the runner: in a closely balanced situation there is usually a good case for doing something than sitting passively by. So rather than judging the pilot on the bumpiness of the flight, we should ask some other questions about American foreign policy.  One would be the issue of importance: are we putting the most effort and attention behind the most important issues? If we are having trouble, does our distress at least come because we are wrestling with the most important issues of the day? Here, I think, Libya fails.  From any point of view (humanitarian, political, strategic), Syria was more important than Libya in the spring of 2011.  It is more important than Libya now.  Tripoli was a diversion from Damascus rather than a road to it; whatever our policy was going to be, we should have put more weight on Syria and less on Libya. Second, there is a question of strategic coherence: can the results we intend be achieved by the initiatives we propose? Here too the Libyan war falls short. This was proposed as a humanitarian war: a war to protect.  Such a war must succeed in political terms: its success will be judged on political rather than strategic grounds.  Are Libyans better off than they were before Gaddafi fell? Are they safer? Is the country more stable, more cohesive, less oppressive? Perhaps it will be.  I certainly hope so.  But this is a goal that we have no way to achieve. It is not in our power to give a good government to the people of Libya. It is not in our power to ensure that the successor to Gaddifi, when and if one emerges, will be better for the Libyans than was the Great Loon. Yet thanks to the circumstances of the war and to the rationale we proposed at the time, our success in Libya will inevitably be judged by an outcome over which we have limited influence and no control. We can get lucky in Libya if things work out to some kind of acceptable outcome — and I hope we will.  But we cannot make our luck: the intervention has made us more vulnerable — not less — to outcomes we have little ability to shape. A third question would relate to possible gains: what do we get if we win?  Do we preserve our existence as a nation in a war of self defense? Do we advance important political or economic interests? Do we nip an emerging threat in the bud? Do we weaken a strategic enemy? Do we advance an important principle of international order and law? Do we prevent a great evil? Clearly, the Libyan intervention was primarily shaped in response to the last two questions.  It was billed as a war to prevent a slaughter and as a war to advance the concept of the duty to protect. It may have achieved the first objective, though by the time all the killing is finished it will be hard to calculate whether more people died in the war to overthrow Gaddafi, the battles to succeed him, and in the prisons of the new regime than might have died if Gaddafi had crushed Benghazi all those months ago. Protestors in front of the White House show support for the Libya intervention Far from securing the second objective — advancing the doctrine of the duty to protect — the net effect of the war in Libya is to weaken the hold of that idea both in the US and abroad.  This isn’t because we failed in the mission . We failed by succeeding in Libya. We failed on two fronts.  In the first place, we failed because victory took so long to achieve, and that victory has been so dismal and unsatisfying (all that blood in the streets, all those tortured to death in the cells) that it tends to reduce enthusiasm for new ventures of this kind.  The next group of humanitarian hawks trying to sell a liberal president on a war of good intentions will have a harder time making the sale than this group did.  Far from anchoring a principle in US foreign policy, the Libyan war provides intellectual ammunition for critics of the idea and puts new weapons into the hands of political opponents of such ventures. Secondly, success in Libya has given new strength to the international opponents of the “duty to protect” idea.  The Security Council is less likely to bless further such ventures now.  Russia and China will oppose new ventures of this kind with more vigor — and with more support from other countries, including some democratic ones.  In world politics today, the duty to protect looks less like an objective principle of law and more like a mask for western interests than it did before the Libyan war. The war in Libya stopped a probable slaughter.  It overthrew a horrible man and liberated a nation from one of the world’s more destructive dictatorships.  It reinforced the world’s sense of America’s great military might — though the hesitating manner in which we fought reassured many of our opponents that we are less likely to use that power in decisive ways than we were ten years ago. But it did not — and, really, could not — advance significant US strategic, economic or political interests. It did not and could not make the world a safer place.  It weakened our hand in dealing with both Syria and Iran.  And it provided new ammunition to those, at home and abroad, who want to resist the kind of order-building the war was intended to promote. It was a well-intentioned war, but not a good one. Libya is not the first or the costliest mistake the US has ever made.  And it is very far from a total disaster.  Gaddafi is gone. Yet we spent money and political capital for a net-negative result and must now deal with much more serious and urgent problems made worse by the “success” of the Libya venture. Posted in Essays , Middle East , U.S. Foreign Policy http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/01/27/thank-god-for-humanitarian-bombs/
Grandpa The Vote pump Jan 27, 2012 6:45 AM
UnDave35 Another Obama backed Company goes bust Jan 27, 2012 6:15 AM http://cnsnews.com/news/article/electric-car-firm-received-biden-visit-and-118m-stimulus-funds-files-bankruptcy Electric-Car Firm That Received Biden Visit and $118M in Stimulus Funds Files for Bankruptcy   (CNSNews.com) - Ener1--a company that manufactures batteries for electric cars, and that received $118.5 million in federal stimulus money, and that Vice President Joe Biden visited last year the day after President Obama’s State of the Union Address—announced today that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In last year’s State of the Union Address, delivered Jan. 25, 2011, President Obama set a national goal of having a million electric vehicles on the road in the United States by 2015—a goal that would be achieved, Obama said, by taking money out of the oil industry and “investing” it in new technology. “With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” said Obama. “We need to get behind this innovation,” he said. “And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.” The next day, Biden visited the Ener1 plant in Greenfield, Ind.—which the White House said at the time had received a $118.5 million grant from the Department of Energy and was the type of investment the president was talking about in his State of the Union. Brian Levine, deputy domestic policy adviser to Biden, wrote an article about Biden’s visit to Ener1 on the White House webpage for the White House Middle Class Task Force, which Biden leads. The article was headlined “Our Plan to Put One Million Advanced Technology Vehicles on America’s Roads.” “Last night, President Obama set a goal of making the United States the first country in the world to put one million advanced technology vehicles on the road,” Levine wrote . “This goal is part of the President’s plan to rebuild our economy by investing in innovation to create the jobs and industries of the future. “Today, Vice President Biden visited Ener1, Inc., a manufacturer of advanced batteries for electric vehicles, in Greenfield, Indiana to announce our plan to reach this one million vehicle goal by 2015,” wrote Levine. “The facility that the Vice President visited would not exist if not for a $118.5 million grant from the Department of Energy, which was part of a $2.4 billion Recovery Act investment in electric vehicles. Ener1 added 120 jobs across the company in 2010 and the future looks bright. They expect to expand the manufacturing and assembly operation in Greenfield from 80 workers today to over a thousand by the start of 2013.” At the Ener1 plant, Biden made a gaffe, mistakenly referring to Ener1—as Enron1. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, here at Ener1, we’re going to harness electricity and bring it to the world like Edison did more than a century ago,” said Biden. “We're going to reshape the way Americans drive, the way Americans consume, the way Americans power their lives. And in turn, we're going to reshape America itself. We may not make battery power so cheap that only the rich can afford to drive their cars on imported oil, but—but--with Enron1 (sic) leading the way, we're certainly going to come pretty close.” Ener1 produces advanced lithium-ion battery systems for electric vehicles. On Thursday, the company put out a statement announcing that it was filing for Chanter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. Ener1, the statement said, "announced that it has reached agreement with its primary investors and lenders on a restructuring plan that will significantly reduce its debt and provide up to $81 million to recapitalize the Company to support its long-term business objectives and strategic plan. To implement this restructuring plan, the Company has voluntarily initiated a 'pre-packaged' Chapter 11 case in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, in which it is requesting that the Court confirm a pre-packaged Plan of Reorganization to implement the restructuring." Ener1 spokesman Guy Westermeyer told CNSNews.com the brankruptcy would not affect the use of the stimulus grant, which went to the Ener1 subsidiary EnerDel. “EnerDel will continue its normal, day-to-day business operations and is actively recruiting to fill open positions,” Westermyer told CNSNews.com in an e-mail response late Thursday. “EnerDel plans to continue working with the DOE to complete the project for which it received funding through the ARRA grant it was awarded in August, 2009,” Westermeyer added. “To date, the company has received 50/50 cost-share reimbursements of approximately $55 million, for which it had to originally invest $55 million of its own funds. EnerDel is optimistic about the long-term opportunities available in the energy storage market, and it is currently evaluating the best approach to continue the project in-step with market demand.” The Ener1 Chapter 11 filing came a year to the day after Vice President Biden visited the companies Greenfield plant—and a year to the day after Biden’s aide wrote on the White House website: “They expect to expand the manufacturing and assembly operation in Greenfield from 80 workers today to over a thousand by the start of 2013.” The Obama administration has previously come under fire for a $535 million loan the Energy Department made to Solyndra, a California-based solar panel company. Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last fall. In his visit to Ener1 last year, Vice President Biden said that in order to reach the president’s goal of one million “advanced-technology vehicles” by 2015, the administration was not only subsidizing companies like Ener1 but wanted to give a $7,500 rebate to people who purchased an electric car like those that would be powered by Ener1 batteries. “As the president said last night, by 2015 we we will be the first nation in the world to have a million advanced-technology vehicles on the road, a million,” said Biden. “So, folks, here's how we're going to do it. Here's how we're going to meet that goal,” said Biden. “It's not enough just to make these batteries. That alone, all by itself, will not get us there. We have to do three more things. We have to convince people at the threshold of this new automobile breakthrough, the new investment. We've got to convince them at the threshold to take a chance, to invest in these vehicles.” “In order to spur this, to increase the number of people that are using the automobiles run by the batteries you are producing, to increase demand,” said Biden, “we proposed changing what is now an existing tax credit of $7,500 that if you buy an automobile like this to an immediate rebate. You get a check for $7,500--just like the cash for clunkers program. You don't have to wait. You don't have to wait till tax time to get the extra money to pay for that vehicle.”
stephley Racism Just Stupidity? Jan 26, 2012 2:14 PM There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said. Controversy ahead The findings combine three hot-button topics. "They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody." Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You] "The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists." Brains and bias Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican] In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100. Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.) As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias. People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races. "This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science. A study of averages Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said. "There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said. Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally. "We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap." Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world. "Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice." In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked] Simple viewpoints Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible. The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general. "My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful." Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ. "There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts. http://news.yahoo.com/low-iq-conservative-beliefs-linked-prejudice-180403506.html
stephley Leave domestic violence laws alone Jan 26, 2012 12:19 PM Monitor editorial A lot has changed since 1993 when a New Hampshire judge, in sentencing a man to a 29-day jail sentence for savagely beating his wife, said that though the man might have been provoked, he "should have merely slapped her." New Hampshire has what could be the toughest law in the country when it comes to domestic violence and that, in tandem with a continued public education campaign, has changed the culture. Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That's the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat. House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That's an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell: An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It's obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It's a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. An arrest is not mandatory when someone alleges domestic assault. Under New Hampshire law an officer must first have probable cause and corroborating evidence. Under existing law, officers have the discretion to decide when an arrest is warranted, with or without corroborating evidence, but most police departments have a policy that presumes an arrest will be made when evidence is observed. It's impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it's prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high. House Bill 1608 would also almost certainly cost lives. It removes judicial discretion by severely restricting when someone who has violated a domestic violence protective order can be arrested to three offenses: committing an act of abuse or an offense against the person named in the protective order, or engaging in prohibited contact. The bill would also, law enforcement believes, remove a judge's ability to order a defendant in a domestic violence case to relinquish weapons or prevent him or her from purchasing a gun. It would also eliminate law enforcement's ability to arrest a defendant who threatens to use physical force against a victim or her children. All are changes that could have deadly consequences and make life more frightening for abuse victims and their families. New Hampshire has been a leader in the effort to make domestic violence a cultural taboo. In 2009, the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence came to the aid of 6,933 female and 515 male domestic violence victims. The state has a long way to go to make domestic violence a thing of the past, but it's been making steady progress that House Bills 1581 and 1608 would reverse. http://www.concordmonitor.com/print/307042

// Posts

See All
Thank God For Humanitarian Bombs?
The Vote pump
Another Obama backed Company goes bust
Racism Just Stupidity?

// Videos

See All
Unfiltered Truth Was Never More Beautiful Unfiltered Truth Was Never More Beautiful
Occupy Wall Street: Outing The Ringers Occupy Wall Street: Outing The Ringers
Casey the Punisher
Best Play Ever Best Play Ever

// Polls

See All
Does History matter to you? Does History matter to you?
Should Empire State Bldg. Operators allow a lighting celebration of Mother Teresas 100th Birthday?
Child drowns in abandoned pool
Have you donated anything at all to Haiti? If yes, which organization did you choose, please? Have you donated anything at all to Haiti? If yes, which organization did you choose, please?

// Quizzes

See All
Don't know much about religion? You're not alone study finds.
Jewish Heritage Quiz
To Uphold it, You've Got to Know It
International Heads of State

// Galleries

See All
Obama 5 Obama
Most Beautiful Car Ever Sold For $3 Mil 5 Most Beautiful Car Ever Sold For $3 Mil
Nov. 9, 1989 - the Fall of the Berlin Wall 10 Nov. 9, 1989 - the Fall of the Berlin Wall

// Top People

See All
stephley Grandpa MartiniLush Roarman starangel82 bluesarahlou Yogaforlife UnDave35 GregS liliblu hypnoticmix amybdk mydiadem T S
Sites We LoveSee More