Category: Government

Government: who rules us.

Firenze Sage: Once a [Palestinian] refuge always a refuge …

50% Palestinian refugees will remain refugees & not citizens of new state
50% of Palestinian refugees will remain refugees & not citizens of new state

A statement by Ambassador Abdullah:

Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed.

“They are Palestinians, that’s their identity,” he says. “But … they are not automatically citizens.”

This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.”

The Palestinian Liberation Organization would remain responsible for refugees.

Moreover, the new state won’t provide these residents with any services: It expects UNRWA – or, more accurately, the American and European taxpayers, who provide the bulk of that organization’s funding – to continue providing their schooling, healthcare, welfare allowances, etc.

So almost half of all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will not be citizens of the state that demands to be created in order for these same people to have a state.
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Well it looks like the peace process is just one huge scam. Surprise surprise!

FirenzeSage48@gmail.com

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Firenze Sage: Jesuit Airline … [with pilot Bachman]

in the name of the true religion
in the name of the true religion
Joy Behar suggested politicians who “use Christianity to make their point” are using the “same syndrome” as “these terrorists who used Islam to kill 3,000 people on 9/11.”

Oh, and since the 9/11 thing wasn’t enough, Joy also suggested a “slew” of kids committed suicide in Michelle Bachman’s district because of the “anti-gay” attitudes there (thank you, New York Times).
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Well at least she doesn’t have Bachman flying Jesuit Air into the Twin Towers.

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Firenze Sage: turning [university student] losers into winners …

vastly different standards for getting into university
vastly different standards for getting into university

The campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison erupted this week after the release of two studies documenting the heavy use of race in deciding which students are admitted. But the university was none too keen on releasing the data, which CEO obtained through filing Freedom of Information Act requests only after a successful legal challenge went all the way to the state supreme court.

It’s no wonder the university wanted to keep the information secret. The studies show that a black or Hispanic undergraduate applicant was more than 500 times likelier to be admitted to Wisconsin-Madison than a similarly qualified white or Asian applicant. The odds ratio favoring black law school applicants over similarly qualified white applicants was 61 to 1.

The median SAT scores of black undergraduates who were admitted were 150 points lower than whites or Asians, while the median Hispanic scores were roughly 100 points lower. And median high school rankings for both blacks and Hispanics were also lower than for either whites or Asians.
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It’s bad enough if a second rater botches your divorce, but heart surgery is another matter.

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Firenze Sage: [King James] For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.

"Where two or three are gathered together in my name..."
"Where two or three are gathered together in my name..."

An Orange County couple has been ordered to stop holding a Bible study in their home on the grounds that the meeting violates a city ordinance as a “church” and not as a private gathering.

Homeowners Chuck and Stephanie Fromm, of San Juan Capistrano, were fined $300 earlier this month for holding what city officials called “a regular gathering of more than three people”.

That type of meeting would require a conditional use permit as defined by the city, according to Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), the couple’s legal representation.
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Ye gods and little fishes!

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Firenze Sage: I am (not) above the rules … says Oakland, CA mayor

Oakland Mayor's overgrown vegetation
Oakland Mayor's overgrown vegetation ...

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan acknowledged Thursday that she had failed to clear her hills property of overgrown ivy and brush, days after a resident showed up at a City Council meeting with photos of her home and called her the “Queen of Residential Blight.”
Pratt showed eight photos of Quan’s property and complained that the mayor was receiving special treatment because her property was allowed to remain blighted while other property owners were being cited. Pratt showed pictures of overgrown bushes and trees outside her home and damaged railings on her deck.
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Why follow rules designed for the other guy.

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humor go home … [different standards for admission to UC Berkeley]

Different racial standards for university admission to UC Berkeley

Facebook post announcing plans by a UC Berkeley Republican group to sell baked goods priced according to race, gender and ethnicity – “White/Caucasian” pastries for $2 and “Black/African American” pastries for 75 cents, for example – has drawn outrage on campus.

The purpose “is to offer another view to this policy of considering race in university admissions. The pricing structure of the baked goods is meant to be satirical.”

But students say the joke is anything but funny. More than 200 students responded to the event, most opposed, and some violently so. One threatened to burn the table and set the cupcakes on fire.
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Another in a series of untouchable campus subjects.

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Firenze Sage: alms for the poor … [CA Dream Act]

CA illegals receive free college education
CA illegals receive free college education

Undocumented college students in California would be eligible to receive publicly funded financial aid under a controversial bill that passed the Legislature on Friday and that now heads to the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, who is expected to sign it.

The bill, AB131, known as the Dream Act, allows students who have graduated from high school after attending at least three years in California to apply for the Cal Grant program that pays for tuition, fees, books and living expenses for lower-income students.

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Well let’s see. We close the parks and get this.

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Firenze Sage: When in doubt, close a CA state park…

more CA state parks close
more CA state parks close

California’s beleaguered park system is preparing for a new round of closures that could affect a quarter of its protected areas, historic sites and nature preserves.

State Parks spokesman Roy Stearns said 70 parks are scheduled for closure this fiscal year.

The closure plan, announced in May, is expected to save the state $22 million over two years. It comes on top of the $75 million that had already been cut out of the parks budget over the past decade. Since 2009, deficits forced partial closure of 60 parks and deep service reductions in 90 others.

Of the 278 parks in the state, 150 have already been affected
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Why don’t we eliminate State perks such as cars, per diems, and junkets first.

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Firenze Sage: slavery for real… [legal under Islamic Sharia law]

1/2 million Islamic slaves legal under Sharia law

Currently, there are half a million Black slaves in Islamic Mauritania …

In Mauritania, the anti-slavery group SOS Esclaves estimates there are about 500,000 black African slaves among the country’s population of 3.1 million.

Their masters are Arab and Berber Mauritanians, who share only the same Islamic religion with their chattel.

Unlike in Sudan, where the Arabs get their African slaves from old-fashioned, brutal slave raids, the Mauritanian slaves are the product of a system that has kept them in a state of bondage for generations, going back, in some cases, several hundred years.

A larger problem is that the abomination of slavery in Mauritania and other Arab countries will be difficult to eradicate.

Slavery is an ingrained, centuries-old institution in Islamic countries. It is also legal under Sharia law.

According to historian Bernard Lewis, slavery is “elaborately regulated.” As a part of “God’s law,” slavery will be difficult to abolish, as one Egyptian Islamic theologian, Dr. Abu Zayd, discovered. When Zayd contended that “keeping slave girls and taxing non-Muslims” was contrary to Islam, he was declared an apostate, and an Egyptian court forcibly divorced him from his wife, since a Muslim woman cannot be married to a non-Muslim.
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Firenze Sage: [Liu appointed by Brown to CA Supreme Court] a Brown Bird re-do

A Rose Bird re-do by Gov. Brown?

Barely three months after Senate Republicans denounced Goodwin Liu as a left-wing extremist and torpedoed his nomination to a federal appeals court, he was lauded as a brilliant and open-minded legal scholar Wednesday and confirmed to a seat on the California Supreme Court.
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The new Brown appoints the new Rose Bird.

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Rose Bird, Once California’s Chief Justice, Is Dead at 63
By TODD S. PURDUM
Published: December 06, 1999

Rose E. Bird, who became the first woman on California’s Supreme Court and whose resolute opposition to the death penalty later led voters to remove her as chief justice, died of complications from breast cancer on Saturday at a hospital near her home in Palo Alto, Calif. She was 63.

Almost from the moment she was appointed to head the state’s highest court by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1977, Ms. Bird, a pioneering liberal lawyer who had never been a judge, became one of the most controversial figures in California politics. She led a liberal majority that strengthened environmental laws and consumer rights. But in 1986, voters angry at her opposition to the death penalty removed her and two other Brown-appointed justices by refusing to extend their terms. They were the first such removals in California history.

Ms. Bird, who came of professional age at a time when major law firms still resisted hiring women, held a succession of path-breaking jobs. She was the first woman hired by the Santa Clara County public defender’s office in Northern California, and she became the first woman to hold a cabinet-level post in state government when Mr. Brown named her his secretary of agriculture in 1975. Many of her detractors were forced to acknowledge her administrative skills, while even her admirers among judges and lawyers conceded the brittleness that made her a lighting rod for criticism.

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