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Whitney Houston has checked back into rehab. Houston has a problem, and she realizes she needs help. There have been rumors for a while that Houston has been indulging in drugs and alcohol, but now it has been confirmed. Houston is trying to get herself ready for the movie Getting To Happy, which is the sequel to her box office hit Waiting To Exhale. The original movie came out in 1995, and all the original stars are coming back for the sequel (Angela Bassett, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon). Forest Whitaker will be directing, and Terry McMillan just finished the movie script. Will Houston be ready to step in front of the cameras? Can she beat her addictions? The past year has been rough for her. Her daughter with Bobby Brown, Bobbi Kris, has been a nightmare with wild partying and drugs. Her ex, Bobby Brown, has remarried and has started a new family. Houston’s last tour overseas was rocky, so she needs this movie. Her rehab is on an outpatient basis. When she is in public, she has a sponsor who monitors her moves.
With a $163-million (U.S.) payroll you got the sense that the Red Sox would turn it around – and they have – pulling into Toronto for a two-game series against the Blue Jays just one game below the .500 mark.
Boston (17-19) will have to wait a bit to get over that hump as the Blue Jays (16-20) finally broke into the win column after three consecutive losses, recording a 7-6 victory in 10 innings.
It was a drawn-out, topsy-turvy affair in which the Blue Jays took a 6-5 lead in the eighth inning when David Cooper, playing just his ninth game since getting called up from the minors, drilled his first major-league home run off Boston reliever Daniel Bard.
With Frank Francisco in to protect the lead in the ninth, Boston slugger Adrian Gonzalez hit his second home run of the game to tie it up.
Rajai Davis engineered the winning run, singling with one out in the 10th and then stealing second base – on a pitch out no less.
Not content with that, Davis then stole third, which set the table for Cooper and he came through once again, launching a sacrifice fly to centre field to score the winning run.
Boston opened the year with six consecutive losses, the club’s longest season-opening drought since 1945.
The natives were restless, especially with Crawford, one of their big off-season free-agent acquisitions, who had been more bust than boom.
Crawford has picked up the pace in the 15 games prior to Tuesday’s contest, batting .305, including a couple of walk off hits, raising his average from .135 to .211. He singled home Boston’s first run in the second inning on Tuesday to extend his hit streak to 10 games.
A Nato air strike in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, has killed the son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, a government spokesman has said.
Colonel Gaddafi himself was in the large residential villa which was hit by the strike, the spokesman added, but was unharmed.
His son Saif al-Arab was said to be dead, as well as three grandchildren.
Nato has confirmed the air strike, without denying or confirming the reported deaths.
A Nato spokesman said the strike had hit a “known command and control building in the Bab al-Azizya neighbourhood”.
“All Nato’s targets are military in nature… We do not target individuals,” said Lieutenant-General Charles Bouchard.
He said that he was aware of reports that members of Col Gaddafi’s family had been killed, but made no further comment.
“We regret all loss of life, especially the innocent civilians being harmed as a result of the ongoing conflict,” said Lt-Gen Charles Bouchard.
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On Saturday, Nato officials said the alliance would not consider talks until government forces stopped attacks on civilians.
The vice-chairman of the Transitional National Council also rejected the offer of negotiations, saying the Libyan leader had “offered ceasefires only to continue violating basic human rights, international humanitarian law, and the safety and security of Libya and the entire region”.
Since he came to power in a bloodless coup in 1969 that replaced the pro-Western Sanusi monarchy, Libya’s leader has ruled with an iron-fisted hand that left almost no chance for any opposition to coalesce.
Quite contrary to what we normally perceive in the West, the way in which Gadhafi was able to cement this highly authoritarian system into place relied not only on pure, brute force — although that has always remained the ultimate deciding factor — but also on two other factors.
One was an intricate system of divide-and-rule that balanced families, tribes and the country’s provinces against each other. The second was by cloaking himself in an anti-Western and particularly anti-U.S. mantle that, initially at least, resonated among many of his fellow citizens after disastrous national legacies that included a brutal colonial period and a monarchy that was perceived as utterly corrupt, both financially and ideologically.
That combination protected Gadhafi’s Jamahiriya — a country that in his theory is run directly by its citizens — against destabilization and proved unassailable until last week.
For four decades, the regime withstood open confrontations with the West that included the U.S. bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986, a series of unilateral U.S. economic sanctions and multilateral diplomatic and economic sanctions that profoundly isolated the country and a disastrous war with neighboring Chad that made a mockery out of the Libyan army.
Under great financial and diplomatic strains, Libya agreed in December 2003 to end its weapons of mass destruction program, committed to pay compensation for the victims of the 1988 airline bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and made its uneasy peace with the West.
Gadhafi also successfully weathered several internal attempts to overthrow the regime and managed to eviscerate all secular and religious opposition groups. The regime seemed invincible, impervious to whatever obstacles were thrown in its ruler’s way.
Thank you Dirk for this information, very good.
The Senate has voted to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, ending the legal ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.
It passed the Senate in a 65-31 vote. Earlier six Republicans joined Democrats in a procedural vote that brought the measure to the floor.
President Obama announced he would sign the repeal of the 1993 law, one of his priorities in the lame-duck congressional session.
The House passed the bill this week 250 to 174.
The repeal allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military without fear of prosecution for their sexual orientation. More than 13,500 people have been dismissed from the military under the law.
President Barack Obama slipped unannounced into Afghanistan on Friday, one year after widening an ever deadlier war and just days before a pivotal review about the 9-year-plus conflict. Plans for a face-to-face meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai were scrapped at the last minute due to weather.
Under intense security, Obama landed in darkness after a clandestine departure from the White House on Thursday, where plans of his trip into the war zone were tightly guarded. Obama stepped off Air Force One just after 8:30 p.m. local time, clad in a leather jacket.
He was to personally thank U.S. troops for their service during the holidays.
The White House said rough weather forced the president to abruptly drop plans to meet Karzai in Kabul. The White House determined the wind, dust and cloud cover made it unsafe for the president to fly by helicopter from the huge military complex here to the presidential palace.
In a rapidly changing sequence of events, the White House then said they would speak by secure videoconference — but later said that, too, was dropped. Instead, the two leaders were expected to speak by phone.
In total, Obama was to spend three hours on the ground in Afghanistan, about half the time he had scheduled.
His visit to thank troops and civilian workers came ahead of an upcoming full review of his war plan later this month. He planned to visit embassy workers and wounded soldiers and speak to troops at a hangar here. On the flight, the White House said Obama’s war review would include no major policy changes.
The secret trip has been in the works for more than a month. National Security aide Ben Rhodes said Obama wanted to go to Afghanistan between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“It’s always tough to serve in harm’s way but when you’re away from loved ones in the holiday season it’s particularly hard, and the president wanted the ability to come out and have some time with them,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes said the scrapping of the personal visit with Karzai would not have consequences because the two just met at a NATO summit in Lisbon two weeks ago.
Obama’s visit comes at a particularly awkward moment in already strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan. Leaked U.S. cables show American diplomats portraying Afghanistan as rife with graft to the highest levels of government, with tens of millions of dollars flowing out of the country and a cash transfer network that facilitates bribes for corrupt Afghan officials, drug traffickers and insurgents.
A main concern in the cables appears to be Karzai himself, who emerges as a mercurial figure. In a July 7, 2009, dispatch, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry describes “two contrasting portraits” of the Afghan president.
“The first is of a paranoid and weak individual unfamiliar with the basics of nation building and overly self-conscious that his time in the spotlight of glowing reviews from the international community has passed,” the cable says. “The other is that of an ever-shrewd politician who sees himself as a nationalist hero. … In order to recalibrate our relationship with Karzai, we must deal with and challenge both of these personalities.”
In Afghanistan on Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said weather and technical problems prevented the videoconference with Karzai.
Reporters learned late in the flight that the in-person meeting was canceled. Even Gibbs seemed surprised to learn of it. He was interrupted with the news on the weather problem after he had started a briefing with reporters traveling with Obama toward the end of the flight.
Obama was greeted on the tarmac by the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. David Petraeus, and Eikenberry.
There are a number of holy books or sacred texts in the world. They constitute the core of some of the world’s major religions. It is generally thought to be, at the very least, simple good manners for people who have a strong belief in one of these holy books not to derogate, at least publicly, the holy book reverenced by another group. And most certainly it is thought to be but plain decency not to deliberately and ostentatiously set out to abuse, mock, defile or destroy the holy book of another group. For example, by burning a pile of them publicly after alerting the world to your deliberately disrespectful intent.
This is, indeed, what one cunning or dim-witted, rabid or naive, publicity genius or blundering innocent, self-proclaimed Christian pastor, Terry Jones, declared he was going to do with some 200 copies of the Koran Saturday, being the ninth anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. That announcement set in motion an extraordinary story and one which opens troubling questions about the war on terror and the current engagement of Western military in Afghanistan and Iraq.
First, the story tells us that in some rather difficult-to-articulate sense, this war has taken on aspects that are fundamentally not serious. When extraneous, or circumstantial, or ancillary matters occupy centre stage, it is a clear sign, by definition, that the main business has been sidelined.
And what or who is more extraneous or ancillary, more truly irrelevant, than Pastor Jones? How could a genuine world issue, of cardinal depth and significance, be hostage to such a trivial player, to a pathetic and obvious publicity ploy by a man the world had never heard of?
Why is anyone paying attention to this guy? He’s not a new version of Billy Graham or even Jerry Falwell. He has no earned iconic standing. He’s a non-entity of a splinter church with a piddling 30 or 50 followers. What he does or intended to do is of no social, symbolic or geopolitical consequence whatsoever.
But what was really odd was how the great and powerful of the world reacted. All week, he was being beseech-ed by the mighty of the Earth to stop what he and his little band of true believers were proposing to do. There was the Vatican, there was Tony Blair. In Canada, Stephen Harper, Peter McKay and Michael Ignatieff weighed in. And General David Petraeus, the overlord of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, astonishingly proclaimed that Terry Jones’ stunt would undermine the “total effort” of the war in Afghanistan.
This sideline preacher’s gruesome little barbecue would jeopardize, in other words, the main front in the war on terror. In fact, Barack Obama himself has been publicly pleading with Jones to put off the event. And most tellingly, Obama’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, undoubtedly under orders from the White House, went into direct personal discussion and negotiation with the Florida-based pastor to get him to change his plans.
What a spectacle. How did a publicity stunt in Florida become a fulcrum for success or failure in the war on terror?
There is something profoundly unserious here, undignified and immensely off base. The first General of the United States, and the Secretary of Defense of the greatest war machine in the history of the world are both deferring to some fringe evangelist for fear that he might … what? Might lose the war for them? If this is the splinter the war on terror is hanging on to then it is, I fear, a house of cards in both theatres.
Nor is it irrelevant that by Friday another, better known exhibitionist, Donald Trump, had inserted himself into this story. “Unreality” doesn’t come in single doses. So now (the cast was assembling), it was the Imam, the Pastor and the Donald. It’s like a parody apocalypse.
Nine years out from the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001, there will be people marking this day with all the solemnity that grief and memory can bring to it. There will be military families ruminating on their sacrifices. I’m not sure how the weird, absurd and — I think — irrational events out of Florida fit with these observances. The whole saga has usurped the great messages of determination and purpose that filled the months and days after 9/11.
by Rex Murphy
Only 12 members of Congress voted to approve health benefits for “1st Responders” to 911 Twin Towers.
Yes the Democrats overwhelmingly passed it. It has been years since 911 and the folks that involved
their lives to save whomever are now greatly disturbed with health concerns – OK who knew. What the
outcome effects would be. These folks Fire Dept, Police Dept, Medics put there lives on the line to help.
And this is how Congress rewards them for a job well done to the best of their ability – well damn Congress.
And you wonder why – folks are voting for anybody other than the incumbent to stand for there City,
or State reps. How dare you put these folks on the back burner. Do you have no shame or guilt what you
are doing to these folks. Understandably the economics in this country are steep, why do you think that
President Obama wanted the Health Care Reform bill past. Not just for future clients, but present ones in
need as well. Congress when are you going to get off your azz and stop throwing a rock and then hiding
your hand. You took your offices with a “vow” to pledge and help your constituents of your state and
others. Do not turn a blind eye to the needs of Americans, families are involved here and future generations.
Have you thought about what your legacy would be when you depart your office? Was it to help or hinder
the causes of citizens of the USA? Or is it money talks and bullshyt walks Congressmen Republicans.
It was a storybook marriage in 1986 on a spring weekend on Cape Cod that united a princess of an American political dynasty, Maria Shriver, and the gap-toothed muscle-clad movie star famous enough to be known by one name, Arnold.
In many ways, it was a pairing of opposites: Her uncle was a U.S. president; his father was an Austrian policeman. She was the rising star of a network TV news show; he was the pot-puffing star of “Pumping Iron.” He was a Republican with a soft spot for Richard Nixon; her family was a pillar in the nation’s Democratic establishment.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Shriver announced their separation late Monday, cleaving a sometimes-turbulent 25-year relationship after “a time of great personal and professional transition for each of us,” the couple said in a joint statement.
The breakup comes about four months after Schwarzenegger ended a bumpy, two-term run as California governor, a job his wife never wanted him to pursue. Since then, Schwarzenegger, 63, has been fashioning a role as an international advocate for green energy, giving speeches and lining up work in Hollywood. Shriver, 55, has guested-edited an edition of Oprah Winfrey’s magazine but also talked about the stress of changing roles after serving as California’s first lady.