Friday Freakout

For the first Friday in November.


Presidential candidate Herman Cain's woes may boost Obama's electoral chances:

President Barack Obama's fortunes rallied on Friday as the U.S. jobless rate eased, his approval rating rose and his Republican rivals battled over harassment claims against presidential hopeful Herman Cain.

Oh, did they? Then it's a good thing vague whispers of even more vague actions were circulated.


However:

It’s Day 5 since allegations burst into the media that Herman Cain sexually harassed female employees in the late 1990s when he ran the National Restaurant Association.

And notably, the GOP presidential contender's poll numbers haven’t budged. In fact, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll – conducted in the days after the harassment allegations surfaced – shows Mr. Cain’s numbers among Republicans have risen over the past month. He is now at 23 percent, versus 24 percent for his top rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

A month ago, the ABC/Post poll had Cain at 17 percent and Mr. Romney at 25 percent.

Oh well. The smear campaign will have to take another turn.



An infant in China, declared dead, was disposed of and found to be alive:

Health authorities in south China said Friday they were investigating a hospital medical team for mistakenly diagnosing a stillbirth and disposing of a baby that was alive.

The probe is taking place at the Nanhai Red Cross Hospital in the Guangdong provincial city of Foshan where the incident occurred on October 26, the Nanhai district health bureau said in a statement faxed to AFP.

According to the statement, Liu Dongmei -- eight months pregnant -- had been rushed to the hospital with internal bleeding and stomach cramps.

She later had an emergency birth, but the baby was neither breathing nor crying after leaving the womb and its skin had turned purple, it said.

Believing it was dead, the medical team disposed of the child but did not follow proper hospital procedures, the statement added.

The Foshan News, a local website, reported that when Liu's sister-in-law asked to see the body around 30 minutes after birth, she was handed a yellow plastic bag containing the infant and found it was still alive.

"I opened the plastic bag and saw the baby's hands and feet moving, the stomach was going up and down and air bubbles were coming out of his mouth," the paper quoted her as saying.

She was further shocked when she saw the baby was a boy -- not a girl as the family had been told, it said.

According to the Foshan News, nurses had told the family the child was a girl in an effort to blunt the blow of its death.

In China, baby boys are often viewed as more precious than girls, as many families can have only one child as part of the nation's population policy and desire a male heir.

Following the discovery, the newborn was rushed to intensive care where he remains in a stable condition.

Is it incompetence or the typical Chinese penchant for infanticide?



Remember- we trade with these people.


The Israeli navy stops useful idiots:

A Canadian ship's effort to breach Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was quashed when Israeli forces boarded the vessel Friday, but activists say the setback won't discourage them from trying again.

The Tahrir, which made a previous failed attempt to reach the blockaded Palestinian territory this summer, was intercepted two days after it left Turkey for Gaza.

A Montreal organizer for the Canadian Boat to Gaza said the takeover of the vessel carrying medical aid and activists from nine countries was not the end of attempts to draw attention to a five-year-old blockade of the impoverished coastal strip.

"Our goal is quite clear, it's to bring humanitarian aid and hope to the Palestinians of Gaza," said Canadian Boat to Gaza spokesman Denis Kosseim.

"We're going to keep coming back, you can take that to the bank."

Three Canadians, Montrealer Ehab Lotayef, Torontonian Karen DeVito and David Heap from London, Ont., were aboard the Tahrir, but couldn't be reached for interviews Friday.

"There was some sort of a black-out," said Kosseim. My speculation is that when the Israelis boarded the ship they cut off communications."

Israel said its navy peacefully boarded two protest vessels on Friday — the Tahrir and an Irish ship — and towed them to the Israeli port of Ashdod, just north of the Palestinian territory.

Officials said the troops took action after repeated calls for the vessels to turn around were ignored.

Israel is allowed to is allowed to impose a blockade on Gaza and already delivers tons of aid to the Palestinians each week.



Is anyone else tired of this shameful spectacle? Anyone?



Was Pope Pius XII an undercover rescuer?

Gary Krupp of the Pave the Way Foundation cites a letter from a Jewish man who escaped from the ghetto in Rome and was taken into the Vatican for safety. Much later, upon meeting Pope Pius XII, the man recognized the Pontiff as the man who had—dressed as a simple Franciscan friar—escorted him into the Vatican.

This pope has been incredibly maligned to say the least. I don't think anyone will be satisfied until he is blotted from history. One cannot attack the Church if it is known as a life-saving organisation.



And now, a cat honoured for bravery and a cat boxing a garbage can (I think the Russians are cornering the cute-cat market).