Bill Richardson: A Genuine American Hero

In The News

Nicolas Sarkozy hopes to gain a little ‘va va voom’ from the Queen Times Online
Controversial pastor coming to Wheeler Avenue Baptist Houston Chronicle
China Shows Photos of Tibetan Protesters New York Times the toll from anti-Chinese riots in Tibet had risen to 19 dead and 623 injured. It said 18 civilians and a police officer had been confirmed dead in the unrest. The news agency said 241 police officers and 382 civilians had been injured in Lhasa. ...... began in Lhasa and have spread to many smaller towns on the Tibetan Plateau ..... 99 people have been killed in the government crackdown
Op-Ed: After the End of the Affair David A. Paterson, who said Tuesday that his own extramarital affairs ended several years ago ...... In the parlance of American couples recovering from adultery, “D-Day” is the day you discover your spouse has been cheating on you. And as with the birth of Jesus, time is reset from there. ...... “The reactions of the betrayed spouse resemble the post-traumatic stress symptoms of the victims of traumatic events.” ..... “9/11 always reminds me of how it felt — one floor collapsing into another,” said a woman in her 40s who lives near Seattle. Another woman, writing in an Internet chat room, compared her husband’s affair to the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed a quarter of a million people. ..... X.O.W. is the “ex-other woman,” O.N.S. is a “one-night stand” ...... A “cake man” is a husband who wants to have his wife and his mistress, too. ..... Wives from sub-Saharan Africa, a part of the world with the highest levels of male infidelity, told me how they went running down the street after their husbands, begging them to sleep at home. ........ If your spouse cheats, you’ve been living a lie. Americans describing their D-Day experiences say that they weren’t just shocked, jealous and profoundly upset, but that their whole view of the world had collapsed. “It robs you of your past,” one husband said. “What is real? What is fake?” ....... We’re the only country that peddles the idea that “It’s not the sex, it’s the lying.” (In France, it’s not the lying, it’s the sex.) America is also the only place I found that has a one-strike rule on fidelity: if someone cheats, the marriage is kaput. ....... he had had “a number of women” (and his wife had cheated, too). ...... Mrs. Spitzer discovered her husband’s apparent penchant for call girls only the night before he announced his “private matter” to the press. ....... marriage-industrial complex ..... A woman in Tennessee told me that she had gained 60 pounds since her husband found out she had been sleeping with a co-worker, in part because the couple now spends most of their free time on the couch rehashing the affair. “Neither of us cries as much as we used to, because of the antidepressants,” her husband said.
What About Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn? eight million square feet of residential and commercial development on an eight-acre site extending east from Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, one of the borough’s most congested intersections ..... the nearby Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower — a classic stone phallus ..... Brooklyn’s vibrant answer to Times Square, minus the saccharine Disney décor. ...... the core of his concept, the charged relationship between the enclosed arena and the street
Barack Obama's race speech an online video hit AFP Online searches for "Obama speech" rocketed 7,627 percent the day after the US presidential candidate took on the sensitive issue of race in a March 18 oratory, according to a Yahoo Buzz service that tracks what's hot online. ..... record-shattering honesty .... queries for 'I have a dream speech' and 'Martin Luther King Free at Last speech' both spiked the day after Obama spoke .... laid bare racial tensions in US culture that politicians usually avoid discussing..... Stewart made sport of "Obama talking to Americans about race as though they were adults."
Obama race speech garners good reviews Boston Globe
Kenya: Obama Euphoria Now Hits Music Scene With a Bang AllAfrica.com the kind of attention he has attracted in the entertainment scene remains unmatched ..... The heat generated worldwide has attracted many celebrities across the world. Musicians, through their songs, are endorsing their favourite candidate. ..... Obama has more celebrity muscle going by the number of A-List entertainers rallying behind him ...... William, of the Black Eyed Peas did a pro-Obama song Yes We Can and its videos have generated more than five million hits on YouTube....... In Kenya, Cocoa Tea's Obama song has continued to rank top in a local radio station as "Beat of the Week" and is said to have one of the largest endorsements. ..... Revellers in Kenyan dancehalls usually go into a frenzy and dance with abandon, as soon as Obama's song rends the air. ...... Perhaps when he comes back to Kenya, he will look for me," says Nyadundo.
Richardson says Clinton phone call got 'heated' MSNBC the conversation he had with Hillary ..... "It was tough to make the call, but I did. It got a little heated. It got a little tense. But it was understood, and I'm proud of my decision." .... He stressed that his decision to endorse Obama came a week before, but it was reinforced by the speech Obama gave on race last Tuesday. He cited his own racial background as a Hispanic to underscore why the speech was so significant. ....... I believe that Senator Obama is going to be the nomnee. ..... "I can tell you that there are very few people in American public life that have the breadth and depth of experience that Bill Richardson has," Obama said, adding that he would play a role in the campaign and hinting that he would have a role in a future Obama administration.

New Mexico Governor Richardson Endorses Obama Voice of America
Richardson endorses Obama Los Angeles Times
Richardson, Endorsing Obama, Looks for Generational Change Washington Post
The line forms here for Rudy Giuliani campaign refund checks Los Angeles Times
Some Tibetan Exiles Reject ‘Middle Way’ New York Times
High Court admits Bihar plea against Lalu acquittal Hindu
The Obama effect Canada.com
Clinton Says Her Passport File Breached The Associated Press "an outrageous breach of security and privacy." ..... basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth ..... the information could allow Obama's critics to dig deeper into his private life
Obama, Clinton, McCain Passport Files Breached (Update1) Bloomberg
State Department Employees Fired For Snooping Obama Passport U.S. News & World Report
Clinton extends poll lead over Obama Irish Times

A top Nepali blogger recalls late King Mahendra NepalNews Kathmandu-based intelligentsia and expatriates say they anxiously await for Maila Baje’s postings every week.

James Watson, Now, Was He Your Pastor?

Hillary Clinton's campaign uses pastor scandal to undermine Barack ... Telegraph.co.uk to argue that her Democratic rival would be dangerously vulnerable in a general election against John McCain. ..... Obama became the undisputed Democratic front-runner after his string of 11 primary victories in February ...... a 13-point swing towards the former First Lady in under a fortnight. .... Geraldine Ferraro .... she was outraged to have been cited in the same breath as Mr Wright ..... "To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable"

If you took high school biology, old man James Watson was your pastor, face it.

Talking About Race, Finally
Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong

Fury at DNA pioneer's theory: Africans are less intelligent than ...
Nobel Winner's Theories Raise Uproar in Berkeley Geneticist's ... Nobel laureate James Watson, whose co-discovery of DNA revolutionized the field of genetics ..... suggested there was a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges. ``That's why you have Latin lovers,'' Watson said. ``You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient.'' ...... Watson showed a slide of sad-faced model Kate Moss to support his contention that thin people are unhappy and therefore more ambitious. ..... ``Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them,'' Watson said. ........ `He took a lot of what I consider sexist and racist stereotypes and claimed a biochemical basis without presenting any data.'' ....... Watson once suggested Japan should be bombed for dragging its feet on supporting the Human Genome Project. ...... listening to Watson at the podium was ``more embarrassing than having a creation scientist up there.'' ..... ``I found it really offensive,'' said Sarah Tegen ...... Watson showed slides of women in bikinis and contrasted them to veiled Muslim women, to suggest that controlling exposure to sun may suppress sexual desire and vice versa. ...... people who live in northern climates drink more alcohol to compensate for the unhappiness they suffer because of sunlight deprivation. .... ``To be a woman in science is difficult enough as it is without one of your own demeaning women'' ....... Now-deceased Stanford University professor William Shockley, who shared a Nobel for inventing the transistor, was ostracized during his lifetime for calling certain races genetically inferior, and for suggesting that people with IQs under 100 be paid bonuses if they agreed to be sterilized.
Controversial Nobel winner resigns - CNN.com
Watson Rediscovers 1940s Attitudes Towards Race | Wired Science ... First he said that “all the testing” has proven that people descended from Africa aren’t as smart as white people. Then, because apparently the testing comment wasn’t enough, he used some anecdotal evidence from his friends. He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.
James Watson Retires After Racial Remarks - New York Times overall, people of African descent are not as intelligent as people of European descent.





In The News

In Tibetan Areas, Parallel Worlds Now Collide New York Times The big factory, said a man sitting next to him, benefits only members of the Han Chinese majority. .... “Tibetans get the low-income and the hard-labor jobs,” the man said. The Han, he said, “are all paid as technicians, even though some of them really don’t know anything.” ...... they occupy separate worlds. Relations between the two groups are typically marked by stark disdain or distrust, by stereotyping and prejudice and, among Tibetans, by deep feelings of subjugation, repression and fear. ...... privilege and power are overwhelmingly the preserve of the Han, while Tibetans live largely confined to segregated urban ghettos and poor villages in their own ancestral lands. ...... Tibetans whom they described as lazy and ungrateful ..... “We believe in working hard and making money to support one’s family, but they might think we’re greedy and have no faith.” ...... Han Chinese said they had no Tibetan friends and confessed that they tended to avoid interaction with Tibetans as much as possible ...... professed near-universal devotion to the Dalai Lama ..... “All Tibetans are the same: 100 percent of us adore the Dalai Lama”
Editorial: Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics ...... Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt. ...... an honesty seldom heard in public life. ...... continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement. ...... the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. ...... both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary. ..... “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition” ..... he raised the discussion to a higher plane.
The Professor as Open Book It is not uncommon for professors’ Web pages to include lists of the books they would take to a deserted island, links to their favorite songs from bygone eras, blog posts about their children, entries “written” by their dogs and vacation photographs. ...... a professor’s job today is not just to impart knowledge, but to be an entertainer. ...... by divulging family history and hobbies, they hope to appear more accessible to students. ...... “It’s better when your professor’s human” .... there are students today who think professors are not doing their jobs unless they convey information in zany, interactive ways. ..... “It bespeaks a certain kind of desire that all of us have for that moment of fame” ....... this increased transparency
Political Memo: Clinton Facing Narrower Path to Nomination Without new votes in Florida and Michigan, it will be that much more difficult for Mrs. Clinton to achieve a majority in the total popular vote in the primary season, narrow Mr. Obama’s lead among pledged delegates or build a new wave of momentum. ..... Obama had turned the furor to his advantage with his speech on race.