Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Ahmed Mohamed and his family plan to leave the United States for college in Doha, Qatar

After finally meeting President Obama last night, Ahmed Mohamed and his family plan to leave the United States for the foreseeable future.
Schools from across the country have made offers to Ahmed since he was arrested at Irving’s MacArthur High last month—his homemade clock confused with a hoax bomb, transforming him into a symbol of perceived anti-Muslim bias.
But apparently it was an offer from the Middle East that most intrigued the family. The Mohameds announced today that they’ve accepted a foundation’s offer to pay for the 14-year-old’s high school and college in Doha, Qatar, which Ahmed visited a few weeks ago as he began a world tour.
His sister, Eyman Mohamed, said Ahmed will study at Doha Academy, while she and his other siblings find schools in the rich capital city, which hosts a huge university complex called Education City.
“Looking at all the great offers we’ve had, it’s the best decision,” said Eyman, 18. “They even have Texas A&M at Qatar … It’s basically like America.”
She spoke as the family boarded an airplane from Washington, where Ahmed concluded his world tour at the White House this week, back to their smallish house in Irving.
But they’ll only be here for a few days, Eyman said, before they jet off to a new life on the other side of the world.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Not that their story in the United States is done. Before leaving Washington, Ahmed appeared with a U.S. Congressman who, along with nearly 30 other members of congress, have asked the federal government to investigate whether anti-Muslim discrimination prompted Ahmed’s arrest.
Meanwhile, Ahmed has become a villain—dubbed “Clock Boy”—on right wing websites that claim the family has Islamist ties and plotted his celebrity. There’s been zero evidence shown for those conspiracy theories, though Ahmed probably didn’t help his optics by meeting last week with Omar al-Bashir, dictator of the country he was born in and an accused war criminal.
“We are going to move to a place where my kids can study and learn and all of them being accepted by that country,” said Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed, before he got off the phone and stepped onto the airplane.
The family’s full statement follows.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

http://muhammadali.com/
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Muhammad Ali

Ali in 1967

Statistics

Nickname(s)

The Greatest
The People's Champion
The Louisville Lip

Rated at

Heavyweight

Height

6 ft 3 in (191 cm)^[1]

Reach

78 in (198 cm)

Nationality

American

Born

January 17, 1942 (age 73)
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.

Stance

Orthodox

Boxing record

Total fights

Wins

Wins by KO

Losses

Medal record[hide]

Men's boxing
Representing United States
Summer Olympics

Muhammad Ali back in hospital with urinary tract infection after he was found 'unresponsive in his bed' just days shy of his 73rd birthday

Muhammad Ali is back in hospital for the second time in four weeks
The former boxing great was found in an unresponsive state in his home
He is suffering from a recurring urinary tract infection
He is due to celebrate his 73rd birthday on Saturday

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Stephanie Courtney American Actress and Comedian Progressive Insurance ads

Stephanie Courtney (born February 8, 1970)^[1] is an American actress and comedian, best known for playing the advertising character Flo in television and radio commercials for Progressive Corporation beginning in 2008,^[2] and noted for her recurring roles on several television series, including the voices of Renee the Receptionist and Joy Peters on the Adult Swim comedy Tom Goes to the Mayor (2004–06), Marge on the AMC drama Mad Men (2007); and Diane on the ABC comedy Cavemen (2007). She also appeared in the season 2 premiere of Men of a Certain Age. Courtney is a member of The Groundlings, an improvisational and sketch comedy theater in Los Angeles, California.

Friday, October 9, 2015

Boston - Poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The rocky nook with hilltops three
Looked eastward from the farms,
And twice each day the flowing sea
Took Boston in its arms
The men of yore were stout and poor,
And sailed for bread to every shore.

And where they went on trade intent
they did what freeman can,
their dauntless ways did all men praise,
the merchant was a man.
The world was made for honest trade, -
to plant and eat be none afraid.

The waves that rocked them on the deep
to them their secret told;
said the winds that sung the lads to sleep,
'Like us be free and bold!'
The honest waves refuse to slaves
The Empire of the ocean caves.

Old Europe groans with palaces,
Has lords enough and more;-
We plant and build by foaming seas
A city of the poor;-
For day by day could Boston Bay
Their honest labor overpay.

We grant no dukedoms to the few,
we hold like rights and shall; -
Equal on Sunday in the pew,
On Monday in the mall.
For what avail the plough or sail,
or land or life, if freedom fail?

The noble craftsmen we promote,
Disown the knave and fool;
each honest man shall have his vote,
each child shall have his school.
A union then of honest men,
Or union nevermore again.

The wild rose and the barberry thorn
Hung out their summer pride
Where now on heated pavements worn
the feet of millions stride.

Fair rose the planted hills behind
the good town on the bay,
and where the western hills declined
the prairie stretched away.

What care though rival cities soar
along the stormy coast:
Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore,
If Boston knew the most!

They laughed to know the world so wide;
The Mountains said: 'Good-day!
We greet you well, you Saxon men,
Up with your towns and stay!'
The world was made for honest trade, -
To plant and eat be none afraid.

'For you,' they said, 'no barriers be,
for you no sluggard rest;
each street leads downward to the sea,
or landward to the West.'

O happy town beside the sea,
Whose roads lead everywhere to all;
Than thine no deeper moat can be,
No stouter fence, no steeper wall!

Bad news from George on the English throne:
'You are thriving well,' said he;
'Now by these presents be it known,
You shall pay us a tax on tea;
'It is very small,-no load at all, -
Honor enough that we send the call.'

'Not so,' said Boston, 'good my lord,
We pay your governors here
Abundant for their bed and board,
Six thousand pounds a year.
(Your highness knows our homely word,)
Millions for self-government,
But for tribute never a cent.'

The cargo camel and who could blame
If Indians seized the tea,
and, chest by chest, let down the same
into the laughing sea?
For what avail the plough or sail
or land or life, if freedom fail?

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Chris Harper-Mercer left nine innocent people dead at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.

A gunman singled out Christians, telling them they would see God in “one second,” during a rampage at an Oregon college Thursday that left at least nine innocent people dead and several more wounded, survivors and authorities said.
“[He started] asking people one by one what their religion was. ‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and if you’re a Christian, stand up. And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second.’ And then he shot and killed them,” Stacy Boylen, whose daughter was wounded at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., told CNN.

A Twitter user named @bodhilooney, who said her grandmother was at the scene of the carnage, tweeted that if victims said they were Christian, “then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.”
Gunman Chris Harper-Mercer’s disdain for religion was evident in an online profile, in which he became a member of a “doesn’t like organized religion” group on an Internet dating site.
Kortney Moore, 18, said she saw the teacher of her Writing 115 class get shot in the head at the college’s Snyder Hall before the gunman started asking people to state their religion and opening fire, the city’s News-Review newspaper reported.
Harper-Mercer, 26, was killed in a shootout with police outside one of the classrooms, said Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin.
“There was an exchange of gunfire,” he said. “The shooter threat was neutralized.”
Although police put the death toll at 10 — including Harper-Mercer — with seven people injured,

Friday, August 28, 2015

Virginia shooting of Journalist Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27

//
A TV reporter killed live on air was gunned down by a former presenter at the same station who then posted horrific footage of the deadly attack on social media.

Bryce Williams claimed to be the gunman and said "I filmed the shooting".

It showed him walking slowly along a wooden boardwalk in Virginia to where Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were interviewing a leader of the local chamber of commerce.

The 41-year-old shot Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27

killer filmed murder and posted on social media

Bryce Williams, suspect in on-air shooting of TV reporter and cameraman, is one of their former colleagues, and accused victim Alison Parker of making racist comments

//////////////
Father of Alison Parker, who is campaigning for gun control, says he will have to get a firearm because ‘a lot of people take exception’ to his views.

The father of Alison Parker, the journalist shot dead on live television on Wednesday, has said that now he is campaigning for gun control he will probably have to get a firearm to defend himself.
Andy Parker, spoke to reporters on Friday after he visited the television station, WDBJ7, where his daughter worked before being murdered - along with cameraman Adam Ward - by their former colleague Vester Lee Flanagan.
He continued to push for stricter gun control in the United States, where decades of mass shootings have failed to produce meaningful reform.
“I want to go to the Virginia legislature and I want them to look me in the eye and tell me why we can’t have a reasonable proposal, any reasonable background checks, the things common sense dictates,” Parker said. “I want them to look me in the eye and tell me why they won’t support that.”

///
As many as 40,000 people watched the attack as the station broadcast live to the local area, including Tim Gardner. The gunman later posted first-person videos of the murders on social media. The videos were quickly removed.

///

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11826040/Virginia-news-shooting-killer-filmed-murder-and-posted-on-social-media.html

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/28/virginia-shooting-lone-survivor-reveals-terrifying-details

Saturday, August 15, 2015

List of songs by Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift

December 13, 1989

Saturday, May 30, 2015

Book review: ‘ America’s Pastor ’ Author Grant Wacker

Book review: ‘America’s Pastor’

Duke Divinity School professor Grant Wacker examines the Rev. Billy Graham’s role in shaping a nation.

Author Grant Wacker demonstrates that Billy Graham displayed an ability to speak to a wider culture about events of the day. | DUKE PHOTOGRAPHY

› ‹

By Yonat Shimron - Correspondent

When Grant Wacker found he needed to explain to his Duke Divinity School students who Billy Graham was, he realized a quick biography was not enough. He would have to explain why Graham mattered.

His book “America’s Pastor,” does just that, considering why the 96-year-old evangelist became one of the most successful celebrity preachers ever.

Wacker, a historian who specializes in evangelicalism, Pentecostalism and American Protestant thought, is perfectly suited to the task. Biographies of Graham abound, and they have been polished to a patina by no less an organizational powerhouse than the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. But as Graham, who retired in 2005, recedes farther from the stage, many who are unfamiliar with the Protestant religion of the heartland or the cultural grievances and aspirations of middle America, may puzzle about Graham’s role and influence. He was not a profound speaker. He often spoke in platitudes. He never digressed from a set, predictable sermon outline whose ultimate goal was the conversion of the individual. Yet that was also his genius.

For many ordinary Americans, Wacker writes, Graham’s theology cohered. “It explained their experiences and enabled them to paint their lives onto a grand canvas. It cemented the convictions that he told the truth, not just about this or that particular thing, but also about reality itself.”
In chapters examining Graham’s preaching, his entrepreneurial abilities, his role as America’s patriarch, Wacker demonstrates that Graham displayed an ability to speak to a wider culture about the events of the day and offer a solution centered on faith in Jesus Christ. Whether it was the rise of civil rights, the dread of nuclear war or the challenges of religious pluralism, Graham offered a moral compass in unsettling times.

Unlike earlier evangelicals who exhorted their audience to give up smoking, drinking and dancing, Graham looked to bigger sins: greed, lust, racism. And he offered people a second chance. To evangelicals, that meant being “born again,” but Graham was able to transcend the insider-speak. “Allow … Christ to give you a brand-new start,” he wrote once. His audience responded.
Wacker’s decision to divide the book into thematic chapters means that parts of Graham’s biography are rehashed in each. We hear numerous times of Graham’s 1957 Madison Square Garden event, which ran 16 weeks and drew an estimated 2.4 million people, and President Bill Clinton’s impressions of the 1959 Little Rock, Ark., crusade, for example.

Still, Wacker is nothing if not exhaustive in his study of archival and other source material, including attendance records at Graham events, media reports and honors. His writing is accessible and vivid. And he takes a great deal of care in fleshing out the nuances of Graham’s life and sketching the ways Graham emerged out of the fundamentalist movement and came to reshape the contours of American evangelicalism to the degree that he became a spokesperson for an American Protestantism committed to Jesus but tolerant and peaceful toward others.

Neither do Wacker’s insights overlook criticism of Graham, especially in the area of race. As a son of the South, Graham could have done more to address the intolerable effects of racial injustice. He did not march in the streets or go to jail. Instead, like other Southern evangelicals, he was a cautious reformer. He integrated his crusades as early as 1953, and later invited black performers and evangelists to share the stage. Wacker doesn’t sugarcoat Graham’s shortcomings, but this is, for the most part, a sympathetic portrayal of a preacher who helped a subgroup of devout Christians move from the sidelines to the center.

Yonat Shimron is former religion reporter for The News & Observer.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/books/article10119065.html#storylink=cpy

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Capital punishment death penalty in the United States

Capital punishment (also called the death penalty or execution) in the United States is a legal sentence in 32 states^[1] and the federal civilian and military legal systems. Its application is limited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution to aggravated murders committed by mentally competent adults.

Capital punishment was a penalty for many felonies under English common law, and it was enforced in all of the American colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence. The methods of execution and the crimes subject to the death penalty vary by state and have changed over time. The most common method since 1976 has been lethal injection. Since capital punishment wasreinstated in 1976, thirty-four states have performed executions.

In 2013, 39 inmates were executed in the United States,^[2] and 3,088 were on death row^[3] – an execution rate of less than 2%. Many states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and Arizona, regularly execute convicted murderers. Texas has performed the most executions by far, and Oklahoma has had (through mid-2011) the highest per capita execution rate.^[4]

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The United States first legalized and used lethal injection as a method of execution.

A map showing the use of the death penalty in the United States.

State does not use the death penalty.

State uses the death penalty.

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Capital punishment since 1976
(by jurisdiction)
Jurisdiction	Executions ^{[nb 1]}	Current death row inmates ^{[nb 2]}
Texas	518	276
Oklahoma	111	49
Virginia	110	8
Florida	89	404
Missouri	80	39
Alabama	56	198
Georgia	55	90
Ohio	53	144
North Carolina	43	160
South Carolina	43	47
Arizona	37	123
Louisiana	28	85
Arkansas	27	33
Mississippi	21	49
Indiana	20	14
Delaware	16	18
California	13	745
Illinois	12	0^{[nb 3]}
Nevada	12	78
Utah	7	9
Tennessee	6	75
Maryland	5	4
Washington	5	9
Federal govt.	3	63
Idaho	3	11
Kentucky	3	35
Montana	3	2
Nebraska	3	11
Pennsylvania	3	188
South Dakota	3	3
Oregon	2	36
Colorado	1	3
Connecticut	1	12
New Mexico	1	2
Wyoming	1	1
Kansas	0	10
New Hampshire	0	1
U.S. military	0	6
Total^{[nb 4]}	1,394	3,035
No current death penalty statute: Alaska, Connecticut^{[nb 5]},Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland^{[nb 6]}, Michigan,Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico^{[nb 7]}, North Dakota,Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, District of Columbia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands. Statute ruled unconstitutional: Massachusetts^{[nb 8]} and New York^{[nb 9]}. Notes: ^ As of December 10, 2014; source ^ As of October 1, 2014; source ^ "Quinn signs death penalty ban, commutes 15 death row sentences to life". Chicago Tribune. March 9, 2011. Retrieved March 9, 2011. ^ Some inmates are on death row in more than one state, so the total may be lower than sum of state numbers. ^ "Connecticut governor signs death penalty repeal". Associated Press. April 25, 2012. Retrieved May 6, 2012. ^ Simpson, Ian (2 May 2013). "Maryland becomes latest U.S. state to abolish death penalty". Yahoo! News. Reuters. Archived fromthe original on 24 June 2013. ^ Baker, Deborah (3 March 2009). "New Mexico Bans Death Penalty". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 1 October 2013. ^ Massachusetts' death penalty statute was ruled unconstitutional in 1984. source The most recent execution was in 1947. The state has no death row. ^ New York's death penalty statute was ruled unconstitutional on June 24, 2004. The last person who was still on death row was re-sentenced to life in prison without parole on October 24, 2007.source The most recent execution was in 1963. The state has no death row.