NATIONAL & WORLD DIGEST - November 02, 2008

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New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Vote for ( )
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The presidential candidates have broad ideas about how to restore the nation's financial health. But what they are not saying is that we are all going to have to pay for it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/opinion/02friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

-Rejoin the World
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
As president, George W. Bush's cowboy diplomacy wrenched the United States out of the international community. We must rejoin the world.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/opinion/02kristof.html?ref=opinion

-What I Will Miss About President Bush
By ROBERT DRAPER, ARI FLEISCHER, CURTIS SITTENFELD, JACOB WEISBERG, SCOTT McCLELLAN and PAUL BURKA
This is George W. Bush's last Sunday to hold the presidential stage to himself. Six writers reflect on what they have most admired about him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/opinion/02bush.html?ref=opinion

-As Taliban Overwhelm Police, Pakistanis Hit Back
Citizens have been encouraged to form posses of their own in a sign of the shortcomings of Pakistan's police forces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/world/asia/02pstan.html?hp

-Obama Unaware of Status of Aunt, Campaign Says
Responding to a report that a Kenyan relative of Senator Barack Obama was living in the United States illegally, his campaign said Saturday that he had no knowledge of her immigration status and that "any and all appropriate laws" should be followed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/us/politics/02campaign.html?hp


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Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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-Pundit Predictions for Election 2008
What qualified as "new school" in politics in 1982? Angry attack-faxes? One thing was brand new: Outlook's Crystal Ball, an election prediction contest now on its 14th go-round. In 2008, a lot has seemed new school. The political blogosphere exploded. Sen. Barack Obama sent text messages. So, to update Outlook's venerable tradition, we've pitted new school against old. "Old school" here is both a term of art and an honorific. The contestants in that category are veteran political observers. "New school," meanwhile, doesn't mean total novice. (At least one "new schooler" competed before. Hint: She also once ran for governor of California.) Those contestants are from a new sphere of political analysis that didn't exist before George W. Bush won in 2000.
...12of14 think Obama will take the White House
...7of14 think McCain will win North Carolina
...14of14 think the GOP will dash Dem hopes of 60-seat Senate majority
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/pages/pundit-predictions/index.html

-The Wurzelbacher Effect
Government has been spreading the wealth for many decades. WHATEVER
Tuesday's voting brings, the national conversation sparked by the driveway encounter between Barack Obama and Joe the Plumber seems likely to have a lingering, and potentially destructive, effect. Consider: Eight years ago, George W. Bush was selling himself to the country as a compassionate conservative. Today, it is hard to detect even the faintest note of compassion in John McCain's railing against Mr. Obama as "redistributionist in chief."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/01/AR2008110101797.html

-Cases Against Detainees Have Thinned
Algerians' Habeas Corpus Hearings Will Begin With Fewer and Lesser Charges
The six Algerians were scooped up in Bosnia and shuttled to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in early 2002. Days later, President Bush proclaimed in his State of the Union address that the men had been plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/01/AR2008110102018.html?hpid=topnews

-Hoping for a Green Renewal, Michigan City Will Turn Sewage to Fuel
Flint, Mich., has been famously decimated by the devastation of the auto industry. Now, even as automotive fortunes look worse than ever, the city of 115,000 northwest of Detroit is seeking to recast itself as a hub of green transportation. Starting with sewage. The city and local Kettering University have teamed up with a Swedish company to turn Flint's municipal sewage into fuel for its bus fleet while reducing or ending the need to incinerate sewage sludge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/01/AR2008110101815.html?hpid=sec-nation

-Rabbis' ruling puts thousands of converts in limbo
JERUSALEM -- Raised without religion in Maryland, Shannon sought to make a new life for herself as a Jew in Israel. In a rigorous conversion process, she studied religious law for a year, took a Hebrew name and changed her wardrobe to long skirts and sleeves as dictated by Orthodox Jewish custom. Finally, a panel of rabbis pronounced her Jewish. But five years later, she and some 40,000 like her have suddenly had their conversions annulled by Israel's Rabbinical High Court. The court says the rabbi who heads a government authority set up to oversee conversions is too liberal in approving them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/01/AR2008110100975.html?hpid=sec-religion


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Sun-Sentinel
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
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-Airlines launch fare sale for holiday season
DALLAS - When it comes to holiday travel plans, good things may come to those who waited. The major U.S. airlines have cut many fares for the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons. The airlines, in the midst of their worst year since at least 2005, may see the price-cutting as necessary in the face of a slumping economy that could cut into both leisure and business travel. Airfare experts say they typically don't see this kind of price-cutting until the last couple of weeks before big holidays. Northwest Airlines started the rush Tuesday night with a broad holiday fare sale, and most other major carriers matched the prices Wednesday, according to Rick Seaney, chief executive of the travel website FareCompare.com.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/travel/sfl-airfare-sale-1031,0,4409260.story


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Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/
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-Unity, hope must conquer division, hate
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
The killers would have worn top hats. Having already murdered 102 African Americans, 14 by beheading, they would have driven at top speed toward Barack Obama, leaning from the windows of their vehicle, dressed in top hats and white tuxedoes, firing guns. That was the plan, according to law enforcement officials who disrupted it a few days ago. Now the alleged conspirators -- white supremacists Paul Schlesselman, 18, and Daniel Cowart, 20 -- are in federal custody, an appropriately bizarre coda for the presidential campaign of 2008. I mean, it's fitting, isn't it, that the campaign end with yet another appeal to fear, yet another portrayal of the Illinois senator as Not One of Us? It makes sense, after two years of viral e-mails, blog postings, talk radio rants and Fox News reports depicting Obama as a Communist socialist radical Christian secret Muslim black militant-marrying atheist-raised terrorist fist-bumping America-hating Manchurian candidate trained to subvert the United States from within.
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/750521.html


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Fort Report
http://www.fortreport.com/
Go to the links for the following articles:

-Barack Obama is a President for modern times
The 21st century began late for America, on 11 September 2001. Before that day, the US still defined its role in the world with reference to ideological triumph in the Cold War that had dominated the century just passed. It was the planet's only superpower and saw itself as a popular champion of global democracy. Few expected the nation to come under attack, least of all the man who had been installed in the White House a year earlier. In 2000, George W Bush was uninterested in foreign affairs. He was ill-equipped to be the first US President of the new millennium.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/us-elections-2008-barack-obama

-Obama's winning argument
The U.S. economy has prospered under Democratic policies, and the candidate knows it. But the real battle begins once Obama takes the White House.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/11/01/obama_closing_argument/


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