Phyrfight Intel

In 2003 the nonprofit organization Child’s Play was created by gamers in response to wild accusations that video games only hurt children. The organization is dedicated to making a child’s visit the the hospital more comfortable by donating money and games to hospitals around the world. Many other examples of charitable organizations formed around video games include: Get Well Gamers and Fun for our Troops.

Here is an example of what can happen when games are introduced into what would otherwise be a somber situation, from ArsTechnica:

Ryan related a story about how he witnessed two young amputees—one missing the left hand, the other missing their right—joining forces to master the guitar in Rock Band. “One child strums with their one hand, and the other child frets with their one hand. It’s truly an amazing act, and they’ve gotten through songs on the Hard difficulty together! I can’t even finish most songs on hard!”

What will”Economic Justice” mean for you?

During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. “I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served,” he said at the group’s 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.

And as president, “we’ll ensure that economic justice is served,” he asserted. “That’s what this election is about.” Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn’t have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.

It’s the rest of the public that remains in the dark, which is why we’re launching this special educational series.

“Economic justice” simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It’s a euphemism for socialism.

More from: INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Video From: dotSub

The Saudi Arabian Human Rights Commission, now there’s a collection of words to boggle the mind, but apparently this organization does actually exist, and they intend to complain
later this month at an event in Copenhagen that Muslims living in Europe are denied human rights and are not allowed to freely practice their faith. How about that?

From: BBC

“Tackling knife culture, especially among young people, is paramount to the safety of our communities, and I am determined to reduce the devastation caused by knife crime,” then Home Secretary Charles Clarke said in the spring of 2006.

Since then there has been a knife amnesty, numerous government initiatives and photo opportunities, with ministers slamming home the same message – that knives will not be tolerated.

But still the deaths caused by knives go on.

“Knife culture”, really? Great Britain has banned almost all forms of firearms and yet violent crime continues to rise. How can that be? I’ll tell you how, they haven’t banned enough classes of inanimate tools  to make the country truly safe. Next on the list, kitchen knives. This quote is from 2005 but typifies that bizarre mindset.

As knives are so readily available, does a culinary reason exist for so many domestic knives…

In the same article the author says that other weapons of choice include bats, chains, and screw drivers.  OK, why do baseball (or I suppose in this case Cricket) teams need so many bats? Can’t the whole team or even both teams all use the same bat? One that can be carried to and from the field in an armored car (when its not locked in its government regulated bat vault). Why can’t bicycles use rubber bands to rotate the wheels instead of chains? And don’t get me started on screwdrivers, why in the world do mechanics and handymen need so many of them? We could have them all serial numbered and chained to 500lb concrete blocks. Then anyone found with an unregistered, untethered screw fastening tool could be put behind bars where they belong.

The Phoenix Lander touched down on Mars on Sunday after 9 months in space. Its mission is to study the arctic soil for signs of water.

Via Wired:

From: HumanEvents.com

Saudi Arabia Did More Last Week to Lower Gas Prices Than Congress Did

The Left just doesn’t seem to get it. They spent much of last week ridiculing the President for visiting Saudi Arabia in an effort to lower oil prices. Here’s what Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Friday:

“The president seems to value his friendship with the Saudis more than his obligation to help the American people with gas prices.”

But what Senator Schumer doesn’t seem to understand is that the Saudis did more last week to lower oil prices than liberals in Congress did.

While liberals were voting to prevent domestic production from oil shale, the Saudis, following President Bush’s visit, agreed to boost their oil output by 300,000 barrels a day. It won’t fix the problem, but at least it won’t make it worse, which is exactly what liberals in Congress did last week.

As Americans, we all need to ask ourselves the following: Which is it — the Congress or Saudi Arabia — that has a greater obligation to ease our energy prices? And which is the greater obstacle to energy independence and security?

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Mr. Olbermann, if you truly believe that 4,000 American service men died for nothing then you have a responsibility to do everything in your power to stop the war and impeach the president. All you have the courage to do is yell into an inanimate object and end your rants every night with a phrase that is not even an original. You sir, are no Edward R. Murrow.

By the way, his title is Mr. President whether you want to acknowledge that or not.

From: Steve Chapman – Reason Online

…Barack Obama is a liberal, but not a conscientious one. I don’t much care if he declines to wear a flag pin; I can overlook his wife’s limited capacity for patriotic pride; and I defended his relationship with his former pastor. But his comfortable association with an unrepentant former terrorist should induce queasiness in anyone who shares the humane values that Obama extols.

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On Sunday night a libertarian minded young woman was arrested for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial while listening to her IPod. She was part of a group who decided to celebrate the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. Watch the video of one of her compatriots and I hope you will be as pissed off as I am. We consistently give the state ever increasing power that now the security guards at memorials think the can arrest people on a whim.

Sexist comments like “darling” will not be allowed in English pubs.

You’ve got to love Photoshop.

From: Ace of Spades HQ

Vladimir Putin just wet himself with joy.

From: Internatonal Herald Tribune

Absolut apologizes, ends ad showing California, Texas as part of Mexico

MEXICO CITY: The Absolut vodka company apologized Saturday for an ad campaign depicting the southwestern U.S. as part of Mexico amid angry calls for a boycott by U.S. consumers.

The campaign, which promotes ideal scenarios under the slogan “In an Absolut World,” showed a 1830s-era map when Mexico included California, Texas and other southwestern states. Mexico still resents losing that territory in the 1848 Mexican-American War and the fight for Texas independence.

But the ads, which ran only in Mexico and have since ended, were less than ideal for Americans undergoing a border buildup and embroiled in an emotional debate over illegal immigration from their southern neighbor.

More than a dozen calls to boycott Absolut were posted on michellemalkin.com, a Web site operated by conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. The ads sparked heated comment on a half-dozen other Internet sites and blogs.

From the LA Times:
Absolut Vodka has begun running ads in Mexico that shows a map of North America in a “perfect” world. The ad shows Mexico covering most of the western United States.

Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders’ film about the Quran (English)

This contains disturbing images. Watch it anyway.

The cowards over at Network Solutions pulled the Filmmakers website. Glen Beck talks about it.

UPDATE (3-31-08) LiveLeak pulled the film because of threats. Here is a link to YouTube. We’ll see how long YouTube can hold out.

From: WSJ

…Race helps Mr. Obama in another way — it lifts his political campaign to the level of allegory, making it the stuff of a far higher drama than budget deficits and education reform. His dark skin, with its powerful evocations of America’s tortured racial past, frames the political contest as a morality play. Will his victory mean America’s redemption from its racist past? Will his defeat show an America morally unevolved? Is his campaign a story of black overcoming, an echo of the civil rights movement? Or is it a passing-of-the-torch story, of one generation displacing another?

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From MiamiHerald.com

It’s possible to pinpoint the exact week that the switch turned off. The war averaged 30 minutes per week of coverage last year on the three network evening newscasts up until Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces, testified in September about the surge’s progress, according to news consultant Andrew Tyndall. In the last 15 weeks of the year, the broadcasts collectively spent four minutes per week on the war.

From: Kinky Friedman via Texas Monthly

…The combined might of our government appears capable only of criminalizing trivia. You’d think George Washington crossed the Delaware expressly to keep Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, and Groucho Marx at least twenty feet away from the entrance to Katz’s Deli.

…I respect anyone with genuine intentions regarding the welfare of all people. What I object to are officious little hall monitors who use health as a smoke screen to promote their agenda and themselves. What I want these people to put in their pipes is this: Spain, Israel, Japan, Italy, France, and Greece all have more smokers per capita than the U.S. They also have longer life expectancies than we do. What can we conclude from this? Speaking English is killing us!

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From: WorldNetDaily

A gun rights organization in the United States is accusing the media of trying to conceal the fact that a gunman who attacked students at Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav seminary was stopped by an armed student at the school.

Authorities report that Ytizhak Dadon, 40, was a “private citizen who had a gun license and was able to shoot the gunman with his pistol,” according to a statement released today by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

In its earlier reporting on the tragedy, WND confirmed, “One terrorist reportedly was shot to death by a student who was armed…”

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The Mexican flag was flown above the US flag at a Mexican restaurant in Reno NV, but not for long. Our thanks to veteran Jim Broussard for setting things right with the help of his KA-BAR.

From: Investors Business Daily

As Northern Illinois University restarts classes this week, one thing is clear: Six minutes proved too long.

It took six minutes before the police were able to enter the classroom that horrible Thursday, and in that short time five people were murdered, 16 wounded.

…as happens time after time in these attacks when uniformed police are there, the killers either wait for the police to leave the area or they are the first people killed. In Kirkwood, the police officer was killed immediately when the attack started. People cowered or were reduced to futilely throwing chairs at the killer.

Just like attacks last year at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City and the recent attack at the Tinley Park Mall in Illinois, or all the public school attacks, they had one thing in common: They took place in “gun-free zones,” where private citizens were not allowed to carry their guns with them.

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