Couldn’t Help But Comment (040908)

Here’s a site to check out – UCC Truths.

The United Church of Christ is the supposedly “mainstream” denomination the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) is a part of. TUCC is the church which the objectively unfit presidential candidate (second item at link) I refer to as BOOHOO (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama) insists he and his family will continue to attend, despite its new pastor’s refusal to renounce Wright’s extensively documented poisonous rhetoric and “black liberation theology” beliefs.

So why anyone be surprised that, at the national level, UCC isn’t really “mainstream”? At least the last time I checked, promoting FALN terrorists as freedom fighters (the Puerto Rican group’s name is translated as “Armed Forces of National Liberation”) was not a “mainstream” cause.

Here’s an “oh by the way” from Wiki which makes the FALN a twofer, as it also negatively affects the other Democratic presidential aspirant (paragraphing added by me):

On August 11, 1999, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of sixteen members of FALN that set off bombs several times in New York City and Chicago, convicted for conspiracies to commit robbery, bomb-making, and sedition, as well as for firearms and explosives violations.

None of the sixteen were convicted of bombings or any crime which injured another person, and all of the sixteen had served nineteen years or longer in prison, which was a longer sentence than such crimes typically received, according to the White House. Clinton offered clemency, on condition that the prisoners renounce violence, at the appeal of 10 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, President Jimmy Carter, the Cardinal of New York, and the Archbishop of Puerto Rico.

The commutation was opposed by U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons and criticised by many including former victims of FALN terrorist activities, the Fraternal Order of Police, and members of Congress. Hillary Clinton in her campaign for Senator also criticised the commutation, although she had earlier been supportive.

In other words, the presidential candidate I refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton) was for it, before she was against it.

This UCC Truths link describes those activities of those whose sentences were commuted, and claims that they did not really renounce violence as a condition of their release.

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has more.

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A lot of people don’t want to think about planning for retirement:

Planning for retirement is only slightly higher on the groan scale than dieting or starting a workout routine, according to findings from a survey of 1,000 Americans released April 1, 2008.

Whether it’s financial or physical fitness, it’s tough getting started.

Only one in three people surveyed is on track with retirement planning, and about one-fourth haven’t started planning at all. Nearly one-third view retirement planning as slightly more difficult than starting a workout regimen (29 percent) or a diet (28 percent).

….. Obstacles to retirement planning for many Americans, the survey found, include the following:
• Difficulty knowing what types of investments they should make, 42 percent.
• How much they will need to retire comfortably, 40 percent.
• When to retire, 33 percent.
• Where to begin in the planning process, 32 percent.

The federal government, which is in the process, like it or not, of trying to “get by” on a shrinking annual surplus from Social Security that it has become accustomed to gobbling up to paper over more serious deficits than those reported, doesn’t help in the retirement planning department. It’s way too late for anyone over 50 or so without a big stash to think about getting by with a much lower level of Social Security benefits than today’s retirees are receiving. Yet, despite all the denials made by politicians, the possibility exists that they will have to figure out how to do just that — if not during their early years of retirement, then in their later years, when it will be too late for many to even think about going back to work.

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Enviros are unhappy with the World Bank:

Developing countries and environmental groups accused the World Bank on Friday of trying to seize control of the billions of dollars of aid that will be used to tackle climate change in the next four decades.

“The World Bank’s foray into climate change has gone down like a lead balloon,” Friends of the Earth campaigner Tom Picken said at the end of a major climate change conference in the Thai capital.

“Many countries and civil society have expressed outrage at the World Bank’s attempted hijacking of real efforts to fund climate change efforts,” he said.

….. developing countries want climate change cash to be administered through the existing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), which they feel is much less under the control of the Group of 8 (G8) richest countries.

Likely translation: We’re really mad that the World Bank won’t just give the money to the corrupt kleptocrats at the UN, so they can give some of the money to corrupt governments in the developing world.

(Aside: What in the bleep is Reuters doing quoting a spokesperson for far-left eco-harrassers and possible terrorist collaborators [scroll down to “WALHI’s Strange Bedfellows” at link] like Friends of the Earth?)

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Karl at Protein Wisdom caught the so-called “Moderate Voice” blogger calling Phil Gramm a terrorist (sorry, no link to garbage such as that), because Gramm supported financial deregulation in the late 1990s. Far-lefties are very good at ruining words with plain meanings, aren’t they?

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This is really over the top (HT Hot Air Headlines):

DURHAM - Members of the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team are objecting to the city’s request to shut down a Web site that chronicles the legal proceedings in the players’ federal lawsuit.

….. Lawyers for Duke and the city claim the statements could prejudice a jury.

The more Duke and Durham lawyers keep this kind of arrogance up, the more likely it is that 2006 lacrosse team members will own the school and the town lock, stock, and barrel.