A few Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 multiplayer details may have been leaked via a thread on Activision's forums, which was later taken down by the publisher. The game hasn't even officially been announced, so you should keep in mind that posts like this often show up for upcoming games, claiming details that are later proven false. But, until Activision comes along and tells us otherwise, it's fun to speculate, right?

• UPDATE: Watch the Brand New Black Ops 2 Trailer Now!

When Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing originally spoke on the next Call of Duty game, he said, "This year we expect to further expand our presence with the launch of an all-new epic first-person shooter title under the Call of Duty brand. From what we've seen to date, the game already looks fantastic and will bring meaningful innovations to the franchise."

• NEWS: Modern Warfare 3 DLC Pack Adds Four Maps, Two Spec Ops Missions On March 20

The most important information we found while scouring the post was the alleged Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 release date. According to the post, the first-person-shooter has an expected release date of November 6, 2012. There will be a new multiplayer game mode, Escort, and Kill Confirmed from Modern Warfare 3 will make a return.


Game Modes

• Escort, a new game mode.
  •  Similar to Search and Destroy however a live player must be escorted to one of three areas (or two depending on the map) without being killed.
  • The match will have rounds, consisting of one life only.
• Drop Zone and Kill Confirmed will return
• Team Defender and Infected will not return

Pointstreaks

• Will follow from Modern Warfare 3’s system
• Larger emphasis on objectives
• A bomb plant is worth 2 points
• A neutral flag is worth 1, however an enemy flag is worth 2
• A flag assist capture is worth 1, a capture is worth 2
• The Specialist Pointstreak has be modified
• 2 kills now gets you 1 perk
• The 4th kill gets you 2 more perks
• The 6th kill gets you 3 more perks
• The 8th Kill gets you 4 more perks
• You do not get every perk when you reach 8 kills
• Perks only become “Pro” when you have them Pro
• RC XD will not return
• Heat vision is a new Pointstreak reward. When you get the required points, you can activate this Pointstreak and your player pulls out a scope and attaches it to your weapon.
  •     This scopes main advantage is it’s ability to detect enemies through most walls. Note, the scope can only be attached to primaries not including shotguns

Item Packages

• Requires 5 points
• Fall along side care packages and air drop traps.
• Features a list of package items only Including ammo, mini gun, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, and body armor

Prestiges

• There will be 15 prestiges
• There will be 50 ranks
• Every two prestiges there is a 5 rank increase
• The final prestige has 90 levels

ELITE 2.0

• ELITE is being fully incorporated into Black Ops 2
• Combat record has been modified and re-named as ELITE Stats
• There will be a specific lobby for clan matches (new way of leveling clans)
• Clan Tournaments can now be implemented

Removed

• No MOAB or Nuke
• No last stand
• No death streaks
• No flame thrower attachment

Map Design

•     Map design and size will be following Black Ops not Modern Warfare 3

Sniper Rifles

•  Improved sniper rifle usage.
•  No aim assist for any sniper rifle.
•  Less sway

Customization

• No longer just perk 1 chooses the players appearance
• Appearance is a combination of all perks and type of Pointstreak being used.

Hardcore

• Larger emphasis on hardcore than ever before
• No grenade launchers
• Only vehicle guided rocket launchers permitted
• Respawn timings decreased (for most modes)
• 1 bullet in the foot will no longer kill a person, a head or chest shot is usually required.
• A person will now bleed out if severely injured.

Perk System 2.0

• The Perk Pro system has been upgraded
• There is now 2 options a perk can advance to.
• Both require different challenges to unlock
• Once the desired Pro version is unlocked, the player can select that as their “Perk Pro”.
• Once selected, the only way to choose the other option is by entering prestige mode.
• For example Perk slot 1 has the perk called Speed
  • Speed – Reduces the time taken to aim down the sight
    • Pro I – Swaps weapons faster
    • Pro II – Throws equipment faster

Combat Training

• Will be returning with vast improvements.
• Difficulty is no longer based on how long the bots take to start shooting.
• Bots now have an advance AI system
• Similar to the behavior seen in the MW3 Spec Ops survival

You could seethe with envy--or you could chase your own fortune on the Web.

Some online businesses require only a few hundred dollars in equipment, while others demand significant hardware and perhaps even a warehouse. Some might make you rich; others might just cover beer money. And all involve various levels of time, capital and technological skill.

In Pictures: Eight Ways To Make Money Online

"Some people have dreamed about owning their own business and have not followed through because of the investment in resources," says Jim Griffith, head of eBay University, for those aiming to set up shop selling goods at the online auctioneer's site. "The Internet allows people to at least try without making a large initial investment."

Army veteran Brandi Ramos of Springfield, Ill., did it. As a single mom in need of extra income, she started her online retail career peddling "big and tall" men's clothing on eBay.

Three years later, Ramos, 32, makes a good living working online out of her 600-square-foot basement packed with hanging displays and baker's racks piled with tupperware containing underwear and belts. Ramos aims to offer quick service, answering all e-mails within four to six hours. She claims to net $25,000 on $100,000 sales a year, and even earns a few bucks per order on shipping.

If managing inventory seems too big a chore, play virtual landlord and charge other retailers monthly fees (or per-transaction fees) for the opportunity to market their products on your site. Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) nabbed 28% of its revenues this way in 2006.

Craigslist is another take on this model: The 25-person company, worth a reported $2 billion, charges businesses to post help wanted ads in San Francisco, New York and L.A.; it also collects fees for apartment listings in New York City. Total page views per month: about 5 billion.

Then there's every pajama-clad blogger's dream: producing content supported by advertising dollars. Selling advertising is how thousands of established online media outlets pay their electric bills. They charge advertisers two ways: by the number of overall Web pages (called "impressions") served up, and by the number of people who click on the ads.

Setting up a blog requires not much more than a basic publishing program, a server and software to track ad clicks. The hard part, though, is attracting enough eyeballs to make it worth someone's while to pay to advertise on your site.

To have any prayer of attracting large advertisers, sites need to attract at least 500,000 unique visitors per month, says David Hauslaib, publisher of Jossip.com, a media and gossip blog that counts Coca Cola (nyse: KO - news - people ) and Sketchers among its advertisers. Sadly, even if you do generate enough traffic, the "click-through" rates on ads tend to be quite low--in the neighborhood of one half of 1%.

Subscription-based models are even harder to crack. Unless your site fulfills an urgent need (for tangible investment ideas, a potential mate, etc.), users aren't likely to pay for the content.

One way to garner subscription revenue is to run a virtual marketplace. These sites collect by allowing buyers and sellers easy access to each other. Many of these marketplaces flamed out in the dot-com bust, but some persist. Mfg.com, for instance, matches equipment manufacturers with smaller component suppliers. Dating sites like Match.com charge subscription fees for access to their members. And H2Bid.com links municipalities with wastewater-equipment vendors.

As with tangible real estate, you can buy virtual plots (URL addresses), flip them and make a buck. GoDaddy.com sells unused domain names for under $10 dollars apiece. To attract buyers, run tests to determine how often certain key words are searched so that you can demonstrate the likelihood that your URL will show up in a Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) or Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) search. One tip: The best domain names are short, sweet, specific and easy to remember. (For more on this model, check out "Meet Noah Of The Internet" and "The Most Expensive Web Addresses.")

As Internet usage grows, so too will the sophistication of online business models. Take 3-year-old Yoonew.com, which sells futures contracts on sports tickets.

Fans buy the right to take delivery of tickets if their teams make it to a coveted playoff game, perhaps months away. Given the uncertainty of the bet, those contracts sell for a fraction of the future market value of the underlying tickets. If your team makes it to the big game, you've locked in a cheap seat; if it falls short, you lose that insurance premium.

Yoonew makes money when the revenue it collects from selling all those contracts exceeds the cost of delivering a small number of very expensive tickets on game days. The danger: If ticket prices spike, or there are no seats available, the company could suffer a loss or alienate its customers.

Sure, you can make money online. But no one said it was easy.

1) Where to start?

You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home. I don't say that because I'm the owner, but a free blog host is very rewarding for a new blog.  Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to build an audience and buzz for your blog.  It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service, is in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move".  Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family, then you have a niche...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.

3) Update Daily (nothing less)

This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Though, I am seeing a growing trend of successful blogs that are not being updated daily, but they are successful and have a stable audience who continue to visit their blog daily.  Regardless, these blogs are still updated weekly with multiple entries.  Until you have a steady audience you should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.

4) Traffic

It's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com.

Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your blog in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors.

Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.

6) Listen to Your Audience

When using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.

7) Multiple blogs

Use multiple blogging accounts (free) to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com and others. The more blog accounts the better (be sure to read and adhere to the Terms of Service for each site). You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.

8) Short & Concise

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.  Stay keyword-focused.

9) Digital Art

Try to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.

10) Keep it Personal

A blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.

11) Interact With Your Visitors

You now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.

Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".

Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring. Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

12) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.

13) You're a Professional

You're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability. Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: Squarespace.com, WordPress.org, MovableType.org, TypePad, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "I have a new home for my blog, please bookmark and follow the link: http://www.YourNewBlogDomainName.com". This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.  Plus, search engines can easily index and crawl your new blog, since your old blog should already be popular with the search engines.

At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.

Joseph Kony is the world’s worst war criminal. In 1987 he took over leadership of an existing rebel group and renamed it the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

The LRA has earned a reputation for its cruel and brutal tactics. When Joseph Kony found himself running out of fighters, he started abducting children to be soldiers in his army or “wives” for his officers. The LRA is encouraged to rape, mutilate, and kill civilians–often with blunt weapons.

The LRA is no longer active in northern Uganda (where it originated) but it continues its campaign of violence in Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In its 26-year history, the LRA has abducted more than 30,000 children and displaced at least 2.1 million people.

What is the goal of KONY 2012?

Invisible Children has been working for 9 years to end Africa’s longest-running armed conflict. U.S. military advisers are currently deployed in Central Africa on a “time-limited” mission to stop Kony and disarm the LRA. If Kony isn’t captured this year, the window will be gone.

We are taking action to ensure these two things:

1) That Joseph Kony is known as the World’s Worst War Criminal.

2) That U.S. and international efforts to stop Kony are bolstered with a more comprehensive strategy for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR).

Why are we making Joseph Kony "famous"?

Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 campaign aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. In this case, notoriety translates to public support. If people know about the crimes that Kony has been committing for 26 years, they will unite to stop him.

Secondly, we want Kony to be famous so that when he is stopped, he will be a visible, concrete example of international justice. Then other war criminals will know that their mass atrocities will not go unnoticed or unpunished.

The Blood

A while ago, I met a mechanic in the America Street neighborhood. When I left his shop that day, he pressed a slip of paper with his phone number into my hand and told me to call him. I waited a day before I called. I was after two things: a friendly contact in a part of town that can be tough to crack, and stories from the lives of the Stingy-Brim brothers, about whom I intend to write in my book.

The mechanic invited me to his house that evening. "I'm making a pot of gumbo," he said. It was after dark when I set out, and, I'll admit, I was a little scared. America Street is among the most blighted parts of New Orleans. Street lights are few. Tough-looking young men rule the corners. (In several days of cruising around, I'd yet to see a woman or child anywhere around there.) After my run-ins with the young men at the mechanic's curbside shop and with his son, I didn't know what to expect.

The mechanic lived on a dead end of pleasant brick duplexes-very different from the splintery wooden house parked beside his fema trailer, on the street where he ran his open-air shop. His house appeared to be the only one occupied on the block; the rest looked flood-hollowed and ruined.

A man I didn't recognize opened the door, took one look at me, and rocked back. I could see him thinking, Cop. The mechanic came forward, laughing, and invited me in. Inside, it was obvious that the mechanic and his family had worked hard on the house-the Sheetrock and the paint were new, the kitchen appliances shiny. An LCD television screen as big as a bedsheet stood against one wall, and four fancy glass place settings and a smoked-glass vase of dried flowers rested on the glass dining table. The friend who'd opened the door sat on the couch and ignored me. The mechanic yelled upstairs for his wife to come down and serve me some gumbo, but when she appeared, stout and handsome, he didn't introduce her. Without a word, she ladled a huge portion of gumbo into a plastic bowl and gave it to me with a plastic spoon. It was hard finding room on the table with all those oversized glass plates.

The mechanic didn't want to tell me any stories about the Stingy-Brims. "I don't do that," he said. "You ask them their own stories." A silence lengthened, during which I concentrated on the gumbo, which contained what appeared to be bits of everything that had been prepared in that kitchen for the past week: shrimp, broken crabs, pieces of fried fish, chicken bones, and long stringy strips of brisket; okra, corn, and great skeins of boiled greens. The spices played on my tongue like a ten-fingered organ chord. I was perfectly content to work on it in silence.

After the mechanic and I finished eating, we sat back with our tallboys of Bud Light, and looked at each other. I hated to let the mechanic get away; it's hard for a bald, stoop-shouldered white guy to make friends on and around America Street. And I couldn't just eat and run. So I threw out a conversational anchor: I told him I didn't believe in God.

His eyebrows practically bounced off the ceiling. Even when he was smoking crack all those twenty-eight years, he said, he believed in God. Who guided the hand of the surgeon who rebuilt his heart? When I replied, "Education," he was ready for me: "Who gave the surgeon a brain that could be educated?" He took me all the way back to the Big Bang, and then asked me, "What came before and who made it happen?" I wriggled free by asking the mechanic where he went to church. "Ray Avenue Baptist, right around the corner," he said. "You come Sunday and hear Reverend Brown." I left soon afterward. He stood in the doorway until I was safely in my car.

The flossy vestibule of Ray Avenue Baptist Church has a frame full of photos from the flooding: mud and mold to the ceiling, ravaged pews, the works. Without those pictures, though, one would have thought the church untouched by Katrina. It gleamed. The Reverend Robert Brown is in his forties and fit and energetic. He took my hand in both of his and told me, in a way that let me know he'd expected me, that I was welcome. A young man with long dreadlocks played a synthesizer; he was every bit as good as other musicians I've heard perform in New Orleans. About thirty people filtered in, including several families with small, scrubbed children.

We sang, we filed up the center aisle to put dollar bills in a silver bucket, we applauded when a sobbing young woman came forward to turn her back on sin and accept Christ as her personal savior. In his sermon, Brown, who has been active in the fight to pressure the city to reopen the public-housing projects, got in a lick at the city leaders, who, he said, "got together to make plans for this city and left the poor out. They were not even on the agenda. You can't abuse the poor and expect to prosper." His voice rising, Brown invoked Proverbs 21:13: "He that ignores the cry of the poor, he shall cry himself and not be heard!"

Then Brown plunged into the passage from Exodus in which God orders the Jews to smear sheep's blood on their doorposts to ward off the slaying of their firstborn. "The awesome sword that protects your life is called the blood of Jesus!" Brown said. "Can somebody help me praise God for the blood of Jesus?" He was on a roll. "It still has power to save and heal and set free and deliver," he yelled. "Somebody ought to shout, 'I'm covered by the blood! Yes, I am! My house is covered. My son is covered. Everything I have is covered!'"

Two days earlier, New Orleanians had awakened to a particularly upsetting incident of bloodshed: two brothers, ages sixteen and seventeen, had been shot dead, and a friend critically wounded; the suspect had just received a ride in their car. Knowing how distraught Brown's congregation was over the recent violence-a killing every couple of days- I found it radical, daring, and ingenious for him to exhort them to imagine themselves drenched in blood. Doing so transformed the most distressing images of the past few months into a balm of redemption. Brown stomped across the stage, pumping his arms and shouting hoarsely, "By the blood! By the blood! The blood! The blood! The blood! The blood!" All that blood, after all that bloodshed, made me, the unbeliever, queasy. But the people around me rose to their feet, lifted their palms to the ceiling, and shouted praise.

Afterward, the mechanic buttonholed me in the parking lot and said, "What now?"

I replied, "We have to talk." To my delight, he agreed.

I will never forget the time when I met Peter Lord at a Cracker Barrel in Titusville, Florida. He told me that most churches taught information when they needed to be teaching formation. He saw that the greatest neglect in American churches was discipleship.

In his latter years of life, he's retired from preaching and spends several hours a week mentoring a few men and counseling some couples. He regretted wasting so much time in front of a pulpit and says that organized churched "could be worse."

Seth Barnes has revolutionized what the word "church" means to me. He taught me that a real church needs to look more like Matthew 10, which is the culmination of Jesus teaching some stuff, showing the guys how to do it, and then releasing them to do it themselves. You just don't see a whole lot of that in churches these days.

Either we have insecure, micro-managing control freaks who are afraid to let a guest speaker in front of his pulpit without a thorough doctrine quiz, or we have cuddly but timid teddy bears who want to talk about our feelings but don't know how to cast out a demon.

Am I too radical in saying that I want a pastor like Jesus? Isn't the thought of that at least a little intriguing? I mean, what would that really look like? Does it look like church in America, or is it time to clean house?

I want a counter-cultural pastor who scorns church programs to pray for hours.

I want someone who is not nice, but is full of love.

I want a counselor who doesn't give me a neat, color-coded model for sanctification or a chart on "how to be righteous" but can be honest with me, sharing his own struggles and triumphs.

I want a friend who is still figuring out his theology and is enjoying the ride, someone who knows that he's a son of God but still cries out, "Father, why have you forsaken me?"

I want a radical. I want some guy who gets angry and turns over some tables, who laughs and drinks wine with you, who throws mud in your face, who invites you out for a stroll on the lake (the water's fine).

As a friend once said, I want a guy with a tattoo on his leg that says, "King of kings and Lord of lords." These days, he'd probably ride a Harley and be a bit rough around the edges. Mostly, I just want a leader who will step down from the altar, take off the priestly garments, and show me how to do this thing called life.

Thank you for choosing us:

Here at BuscaFriends, we would like to thank you for being a great and loyal member.
Our Team is working hard to make your stay here more pleasent.

We are always giving away different prizes just because you are important for us, and we would love to make you happy.
We are all a big family and we hope you feel at home.

Best Regards.
BuscaFriends

For more information about prizes go to our Free Stuff page

As specified in the Constitution, the 2012 presidential election will coincide with the United States Senate elections where one-third of the Senators will face re-election (33 this time), and the United States House of Representatives elections (which occurs every two years) to elect the members for the 113th Congress. Eleven gubernatorial elections and many elections for state legislatures will also take place at the same time.

Background

In 2008, Barack Obama defeated Republican John McCain in the presidential election, while the Democrats had net gains in both chambers of the U.S. Congress, maintaining their majorities. The major theme during the 2008 campaign was the American public's general desire of change and reform from both Washington and the policies of outgoing Republican President George W. Bush, who was term limited out of office. The economy and other domestic policies were also dominant issues, especially during the last months of the campaign after the onset of the 2008 economic crisis.

During Obama's presidency, he signed two pieces of economic stimulus - the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 in December 2010. As President, Obama also signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. Obama signed New START, an arms control treaty with Russia, began to gradually withdraw troops from Iraq, began to increase troops in Afghanistan, and enforced the United Nations-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya. And on May 1, 2011, President Obama ordered the military operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

The Democrats did not fare as well in the 2010 midterm elections, suffering major defeats in many national and state level elections, with many seats switching to Republican control. The Republicans also recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives. Candidates and voters in 2010 focused on the worsening national economic conditions and the economic policies of the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats. The passage of the controversial Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act also contributed to the low approval ratings of Congress, particularly Democrats, as well as concerns over tax rates and record deficits. The fiscally-focused and quasi-libertarian Tea Party movement became a vocal force in mobilizing voters in 2010 for Republican candidates nationwide.

Polling in 2011 found that Americans were still increasingly frustrated with the U.S. government as a whole, and the Republican Party shared in those high disapproval ratings. In particular, although the majority of Americans felt Obama did not have a successful plan to bring jobs, they trusted Congress even less to create them. The debt-ceiling crisis further eroded public support for both Obama and the congressional Republicans

Electoral College changes

A graphic representation of gains and losses in the 2012 electoral college. Orange indicates losses, and blue indicates gains.

The 2010 Census changed the Electoral College vote apportionment for the Presidential elections from 2012 to 2020 in the states listed below and mapped right.

Eight States (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington) gained votes, due to reapportionment based on the 2010 Census. Similarly ten States (Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania) lost votes.

In the political climate of 2011, this would give the Democratic Party a net loss of six electoral votes in states won by Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama in the past three presidential elections, rendering the party a national total of 242. Conversely, the Republican Party will achieve a net gain of six electoral votes in states won by George W. Bush and John McCain in the past three presidential elections, rendering the GOP a national total of 181. Votes allocated to remaining states (i.e., those where the majority voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates during the last three presidential elections) remain unchanged from the national total of 115.

In 2011, several states enacted new laws that the Democratic Party attacked as attempts to improve the Republican Party's presidential prospects. Florida, Georgia, Ohio Tennessee and West Virginia made their early voting periods shorter. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from voting. Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin began requiring voters to identify themselves with government-issued IDs before they could cast their ballots. Barack Obama, the NAACP, and the Democratic Party fought against many of the new state laws, and Bill Clinton denounced it, saying, "There has never been in my lifetime, since we got rid of the poll tax and all the Jim Crow burdens on voting, the determined effort to limit the franchise that we see today". He said the moves would effectively disenfranchise core voter blocs that trend liberal, college students, Blacks, and Latinos.Rolling Stone magazine criticized the American Legislative Exchange Council for lobbying in states to bring about these laws. The Obama campaign fought against the Ohio law, pushing for a petition and statewide referendum to repeal it in time for the 2012 election.

Pennsylvania proposed a new plan that would change its representation in the electoral college from a winner-take-all model to a district-by-district model. The Governorship and both houses of its congress were Republican-controlled, and the move was seen as an affront to Obama's re-election.

Nomination process

In the United States, there are two major political parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There are also several minor parties, usually called third parties, none of which has won a presidential election since 1848 (Lincoln's National Union Party, which won in 1864, was a short-lived coalition of Republicans and Northern Democrats rather than an independent party), although in 1912 former President Theodore Roosevelt, as candidate of the Progressive Party came in second by a wide margin. Most media and public focus is on the two major parties.

Each party hosts candidates who go through a nomination process to determine the presidential nominee for that party. The nomination process consists of primaries and caucuses, held by the 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. The winner of each of these primary elections usually receives delegates proportional to the percentage of the popular vote that candidate received in each states. In many Republican primaries, all the state's delegates are awarded to the winning candidate. In the Democratic Party, high-ranking party members known as superdelegates each receive one vote in the convention. Whichever candidate has the majority of the delegates at the end of the primary elections is designated the presumptive nominee until he or she is formally nominated and endorsed for the presidency by his or her political party. This is done by the aforementioned delegates for each party at their respective party's national convention

Candidates gallery

Active candidates

These candidates have participated in debates.

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  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich of Georgia (campaign)

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  U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas (campaign)

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  Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (campaign)

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  Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (campaign)

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LA HABANA, 23 de enero (PL).— El músico Adolfo Alfonso, uno de los grandes cultores de la décima cubana, murió hoy aquí a los 87 años víctima de un paro cardiorrespiratorio, anunció el Noticiero Nacional de Televisión.

Nacido en julio de 1924, desde los 12 años comenzó su carrera en la emisora radial CMBF.

Fundador de la televisión cubana, durante más de 25 años trabajo en el espacio Palmas y cañas, en el que hizo memorable dúo con otro gran exponente del género, el fallecido Justo Vega.

Maestro de varias generaciones, llevó su arte a varios escenarios del mundo, entre ellos Panamá, Perú, México, Venezuela, España y Angola.

El repentismo, dijo en una ocasión, es mi vida. La décima para mí/haciendo una breve suma, es como lo fue la pluma/ para el apóstol Martí/, expresó en una de sus populares improvisaciones.

Durante su trayectoria recibió múltiples condecoraciones, entre ellas la Distinción por la Cultura Nacional, la Orden Félix Varela de Primer Grado, otorgada por el Consejo de Estado y el Premio Nacional de Música, en 2004.

MIAMI, 24 de enero.—La Pupila Insomne publicó ayer un artículo de Miguel Fernández, periodista residente en Miami, quien reseña la comparecencia de Reina Luisa Tamayo, madre del fallecido recluso Orlando Zapata Tamayo, ante las cámaras y micrófonos del programa televisivo "A Fondo con Sevcec", de un canal local, donde dijo "sentirse traicionada, engañada y decepcionada" con todos los que la llenaron de luces y ofrecimientos.

"Los que nos prometieron ayuda nos han traicionado", confesó la mujer a una pregunta del moderador del programa, y contó las vicisitudes que tiene que enfrentar para sobrevivir en Miami, siete meses después de su llegada.

La madre de Zapata llegó a Estados Unidos cargando las cenizas de su hijo el pasado 9 de junio. Entre vítores y abrazos, los mismos que empujaron al suicidio a Zapata, la recibieron en el aeropuerto. Políticos, cabilderos y hasta algún que otro terrorista, se congregaron en el Miami International Airport, para darle una bienvenida cargada de promesas.

La señora Tamayo, ataviada con sus acostumbrados collares yorubas, dijo estar viviendo un momento desesperado y con una mezcla de rabia y tristeza, afirmó que "el espíritu de mi hijo estará sufriendo lo que está pasando su madre".

La madre de Zapata Tamayo explicó a la teleaudiencia de Miami que fue engañada por sus patrocinadores y dijo sentirse manipulada por los mismos que prometieron ayudarla. Contó, además, cómo se gana la vida como sirvienta, limpiando casas, cuidando ancianos y junto a su esposo, arreglando la hierba de los patios.

"Vivimos nueve personas en una sola casa, pero no nos alcanza el dinero para pagar la renta de 2 300 dólares mensuales, más el resto de las cuentas (agua, luz, teléfono y comida, entre otras)", declaró con dolor, mientras narraba sus esfuerzos por conseguir que la comunidad cubana exiliada les diera algo de ayuda económica.

Reina Luisa decidió marcharse a Miami junto a doce familiares. Durante la campaña difamatoria que se orquestó desde Miami contra Cuba, después de la muerte de Zapata Tamayo, "grupos de exiliados" y "organizaciones de refugiados" ofrecieron brindar ayuda a la familia Tamayo. (Fragmentos tomados de Cubadebate)