Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney cites Scripture on gay marriage
Sunday, May 17th 2007


BOSTON - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is defending his opposition to gay marriage by citing the Scriptures.
“This isn‘t just some temporary convenience here on Earth, but we‘re people that are designed to live together as male and female and we‘re gonna have families,” he tells interviewer Mike Wallace, according to an excerpt CBS released Friday. “And that, there‘s a great line in the Bible that children are an inheritance of the Lord and happy is he who has or hath his quiver full of them.”
“What‘s at the heart of my faith is a belief that there‘s a creator, that we‘re all children of the same God, and that fundamentally the relationship you have with your spouse is important and eternal,” Romney said over the course of two interviews, one of which was taped at his vacation home in Wolfeboro, N.H.
In its main story, Time writes, “The closest he has ever come to a personal religious crisis, he recalls, was when he was in college and considering whether to go off on a mission, as his grandfather, father and brother had done. … He says he also felt guilty about the draft deferment he would get for it, when other young men his age were heading for Vietnam.”
“I didn‘t go on a mission to avoid the draft,” Romney said at the time. “I never asked my dad (Michigan Gov. George Romney) in any way to be involved with the draft board.

Poverty Facts and Stats

Causes of Poverty

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this? Is it enough to blame poor people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy, made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their plight? What about governments of poor countries? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful development? Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. But deeper and more global causes of poverty are often less discussed.
Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization are global decisions, policies, and practices. These are typically influenced, driven, or formulated by the rich and powerful. These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.
In the face of such enormous external influence, the governments of poor nations and their people are often powerless. As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.
These next few articles and sections explore various poverty issues in more depth:

Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty
Structural adjustment policies, prescribed as condition for loans and repayment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, have resulted in cutbacks to health, education and other vital social services around the world. In addition, developing nation governments are required to open their economies to compete with each other and with more powerful and established industrialized nations. To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources. This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.

Poverty Around The World
Inequality is increasing around the world while the world appears to globalize. Even the wealthiest nation has the largest gap between rich and poor compared to other developed nations. In many cases, international politics and various interests have led to a diversion of available resources from domestic needs to western markets. Historically, politics and power play by the elite leaders and rulers have increased poverty and dependency. These have often manifested themselves in wars, hot and cold, which have often been trade- and resource-related. Mercantilist practices, while presented as free trade, still happen today. Poverty is therefore not just an economic issue, it is also an issue of political economics.

Today, over 26,500 children died around the world
Around the world, 27–30,000 children die every day. That is equivalent to 1 child dying every 3 seconds, 20 children dying every minute, a 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring almost every week, or 10–11 million children dying every year. Over 50 million children died between 2000 and 2005. The silent killers are poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. In spite of the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

Economic Democracy
This next page is a reposting of a flyer about a new book from J.W. Smith and the Institute for Economic Democracy, whom I thank for their kind permission. The book is called Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle Of The 21st Century. Typically on this site, I do not advertise books etc, (although I will cite from and link to some, where relevant). However, in this case, I found that the text in the flyer provides an excellent summary of poverty's historic roots, as well as of the multitude of issues that cause poverty. (Please also note that I do not make any proceeds from the sale of this book in any way.)

World Hunger and Poverty
People are hungry not because of lack of availability of food, or “over” population, but because they are too poor to afford the food. Politics and economic conditions have led to poverty and dependency around the world. Addressing world hunger therefore implies addressing world poverty as well. If food production is further increased and provided to more people while the underlying causes of poverty are not addressed, hunger will still continue because people will not be able to purchase food.

Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty
Even non-emergency food aid, which seems a noble cause, is destructive, as it under-sells local farmers and can ultimately affect the entire economy of a poor nation. If the poorer nations are not given the sufficient means to produce their own food and other items then poverty and dependency may continue. In this section you will also find a chapter from the book World Hunger: 12 Myths, by Lappé et al., which describes the situation in detail and looks at the myth that food aid helps the hungry.

Corruption
We often hear leaders from rich countries telling poor countries that aid and loans will only be given when they show they are stamping out corruption. While that definitely needs to happen, the rich countries themselves are often active in the largest forms of corruption in those poor countries, and many economic policies they prescribe have exacerbated the problem. Corruption in developing countries definitely must be high on the priority lists, but so too must it be on the priority lists of rich countries.

United Nations World Summit 2005
The UN World Summit for September 2005 is supposed to review progress since the Millennium Declaration, adopted by all Member States in 2000. However, the US has proposed enormous changes to an outcome document that is to be signed by all members. There are changes on almost all accounts, including striking any mention of the Millennium Development Goals, that aim for example, to halve poverty and world hunger by 2015. This has led to concerns that the outcome document will be weakened. Developing countries are also worried about stronger text on human rights and about giving the UN Security Council more powers.

IMF & World Bank Protests, Washington D.C.
To complement the public protests in Seattle, the week leading up to April 16th/17th 2000 saw the other two global institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, as the focus of renewed protests and criticisms in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the mass demonstrations was to protest against the current form of globalization, which is seen as unaccountable, corporate-led, and non-democratic, and to show the link between poverty and the various policies of the IMF and the World Bank.

Poverty Facts and Stats
While the world is globalizing and the mainstream media in many developed nations point out that economies are booming (or, in periods of downturns, that the current forms of “development” and economic policies are the only ways for people to prosper), there is an increasing number of poor people who are missing out on this apparent boom, while increasingly fewer people are becoming far wealthier. Some of these facts and figures are an eye-opener, to say the least.

Red Ring of DEATH!!!!

Ask any Xbox 360 owner what their greatest fear concerning their $300-$400 piece of machinery is, and you might receive a variety of answers. For some, the words “Halo 3” and “cancelled” being in the same sentence might bring nightmares to their otherwise soothing dreams. For others, terror might set in at the mere idea of trying to afford a new HD television to take advantage of all the bells and whistles associated with their beefy console. However, one concept that is sure to make the blood run cold in any Xbox 360 owner’s veins is the sight of the dreaded “red ring of death”. More appropriately, the ring of light on the front of an Xbox 360 flashing red, indicating some major trouble is about to go down. Since its initial launch, the Xbox 360 has taken on a bad rap- in the media at least- as a system that constantly overheats, is poorly manufactured, and is too unstable to be on store shelves. The aforementioned problems are just a few of the reasons people claim to have experienced when the dreaded flashing lights illuminate on their beloved console. Whatever the reason for seeing them, these lights are never a welcome sight. We’ve read the plights of our forum members who’ve had to go through the process of getting a new Xbox 360 when they’ve gone caput, and heard the problems experienced with trying to get a new system. So when several of us at TeamXbox had our systems go the way of the dodo, we decided to record the process from beginning to end, to see what all is involved, and maybe offer up some friendly advice for those who’ve yet to experience this issue. We also gave Microsoft a chance to chime in on the subject, and they’ve obliged, which does show us that the console maker is all about righting the red-ringed fleet.
The dreaded flashing red lights of death!Houston, we have a problem. Before we take a look at our Xbox 360’s journey to the repair center in Texas, first we must take note of why a system would have to be sent there in the first place. Flashing red lights on the Xbox 360’s normally green ring of light is a bad sign, no matter how you cut the cake, but all red lights don’t mean a visit down south is necessary. Some issues can be resolved from the comfort of one’s own home. The Xbox 360’s ring is divided into four separate quadrants. Each division turning red indicates a separate problem, all with a different way of resolving the issue. It should be noted that when gamers call the support line about their defective unit, the standard procedure of operation is to have gamers unplug all cables from the unit, reinsert them, and try booting the system again. The support worker will also have players remove their hard drive and reboot the system to check and see if that is the problem. In the hope of speeding the process along, it might be a wise thought to run through those procedures before calling the Xbox 360 support line. As mentioned, each quadrant on the set of flashing red lights indicates a different issue. If all of the lights but the first section are flashing, this means a general hardware failure has occurred. There is little to be done other than trying to unhook and reattach your cables. This problem is a sure sign a visit to the repair center is in your console’s future. If the problem is indicated in the second quadrant of the system, it is merely overheating. As too many hours of GRAW will do that to a unit, the proposed cure here is to unplug the unit from the power supply, let it sit to cool down, and perhaps begin scouting for a better location to store your precious investment. A problem indicated in the third quadrant of the Xbox 360 ring of light is diagnosed as a hardware failure. Once again, try re-inserting all of your cords and cables, but this problem should definitely be dealt with by the repair center. If all four lights are flashing on the front of your console, this is perhaps the easiest problem to fix. This is an issue with the AV cable not being properly inserted into the back of the console. The cure? Just make sure the cord “clicks” once it has been inserted into the unit. If that doesn’t work, of course call the repair center, but the four lights are the easiest of the problems to rectify. Assuming that the assistance is needed, a phone call to the helpful people at the Xbox 360 support center is the next step. Every day from 9:00 A.M. to 1:00 A.M. Eastern time, and 6:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. Pacific Time, gamers can call 1-800-4MY-XBOX to get the repair process started. International users can dial 425-635-7180. Once the call has been made, and the problem identified, an empty box is then sent out to gamers. The particular problem at hand will determine what all contents are shipped back to the repair center. Unless you are experiencing a problem with the hard drive of your console, all you typically send back is the system itself. Detach the hard drive, remove and store all discs, and keep all controllers and cords. There are warnings throughout the instruction page sent out that if you send in anything not needed, it might not be returnedTo the repair center…and beyond! Below you will find a complete breakdown of the time it took from the very first call we made to the repair center, to when we finally received a working unit. We had a bit of a unique experience with our system, as the first replacement console we received was defective as well, causing us to go through the procedure a second time. To compensate, we were told that we would receive overnight shipping for the whole process and a free game. We didn’t actually get the overnight processing (it was the standard shipping instead), but we did receive a copy of Perfect Dark Zero for the trouble. Sunday May 28th: Xbox 360 experiences red lights of death. The day the games stopped playing. Monday May 29th: Called Xbox 360 repair center. Explained the problem, and were told that a box would be sent out the next day due to the holiday (Memorial Day). Friday June 2nd: Received the empty box to ship the 360 back in. It was then packaged up, and sent out that same day. Wednesday June 7th: The Xbox 360 repair center received our broken console. Thursday June 8th: A refurbished Xbox 360 system was sent back to us. Tuesday June 13th: We received our refurbished Xbox 360 system. This unit was also broken, so we called the help center once more and were told a new box would be sent overnight to us. We also had our choice of a free game for the trouble. Wednesday June 14th: Another box was sent to us for this Xbox 360 unit. It was not marked for overnight shipping like we were told. Monday June 19th: We received the second empty box for our console. Tuesday June 20th: The second defective unit was shipped back to the repair center in McAllen, Texas. Friday June 23rd: Second defective unit was received by the repair center. Monday June 26th: Another refurbished Xbox 360 console was shipped back to us. Wednesday June 28th: We received our free copy of Perfect Dark Zero. Thursday June 29th: We received our third console, and so far, things are in working order.