Morning Posting.

• Updated !Earthquakes in the last 24 hours in the world seismic activity in the Philipines 5.1 and 5.2 in russia! More info here.

• Japan : For the most accurate info on the nuclear disaster go to: Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog.Here.

• Hurricane Katia : Latest Updates here.

• “The War On Christianity” – Hindu, Buddhist & Muslim Religious Leaders Invited to 9/11 Tribute Event — But No Evangelicals?(TheBlaze).The head of the Southern Baptist Convention is asking President Barack Obama to reconsider attending a September 11 commemorative event at Washington National Cathedral. Why, you ask?The planned observance of the 10th anniversary of America’s worst terror attack will include the Bishop of Washington, a Hindu priest, a Buddhist nun, the president of the Islamic Society of North America and a Muslim musician – but not an evangelical Christian. This exclusion has caused SBC President Frank Page to call upon the president to reconsider his presence at the event.Obama is slated to speak at a “secular” program on Sunday night. According to reports, five faith leaders are scheduled to deliver prayers, but these individuals have not yet been publicly identified.Considering evangelical Christianity’s influence in America, it’s interesting that the event, entitled “A Call to Compassion,” will exclude this large subset of the faith. According to Fox News, Page has voiced his frustrations:“It’s not surprising. There is a tragic intolerance toward Protestants and particularly toward evangelicals and I wish the president would refuse to speak unless it was more representative.I think it would send a very strong and very positive signal to the left wing extremists in our country that the president ought not show up.”Christian leader Tony Perkins (head of the Family Research Council) reiterated these statements, also claiming that the exclusion is unacceptable:

“Three quarters of the American people identify as Christian and nearly a third of them are evangelical Christian. And yet, there is not a single evangelical on the program.There’s no doubt that this is clearly politically correct. It is historically inaccurate that in times of need or mourning that Americans pray to the Hindu or Buddhist Gods or the God of Islam. America is overtly a Christian nation that prays to the Judeo-Christian God – and specifically to Jesus Christ.”But the Cathedral claims that there is nothing sinister in its exclusion of evangelicals. Richard Weinberg, the director of communications for the Cathedral, claims that the goal was to have interfaith representation and that the church’s own involvement balances the need for Christian representation:“The Cathedral itself is an Episcopal church and it stands to reason that our own clergy serve as Christian representatives.We certainly aim to appeal to as many in the country as possible and feel that our events are not any one slice that could ever represent the entire country — but that we are doing our best commemorate the events as it fits with our mission.”So far, no official response has come from the White House and all signs point to the president ignoring Page’s plea. Regardless of intentions, this could create — or further perpetuate — the perception that the president is not sympathetic to evangelical causes and concerns.That said, this event is private in nature and Obama has been invited as a guest. Considering that his administration doesn’t have control over the guest list, perhaps most will simply blame the Cathedral (and not the president) for refusing — at least until this point — to include evangelical Christians in the commemorative mix.Hmmmm…..”Divide et impera”. Let me guess that the representative for the Islamitic faith might be ‘Imam Rauf’?Read the full story here.

• Up to 25 killed and scores injured in two suicide blasts in Quetta, Pakistan.(AlArabiya).Two suicide bombers targeting a senior security official struck near government offices in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Wednesday, killing at least 25 people and injuring scores of others, Al Arabiya correspondent said.There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Pakistan’s Taliban militants, who are close to al-Qaeda, often carry out such attacks as part of a campaign designed to topple the US-backed government.Quetta is the main town of Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, police said.Autonomy-seeking militants demanding a greater share of the profits from oil and other resources in the province of Baluchistan, of which Quetta is the capital, have also waged a low-level insurgency for decades.One of the suicide bombers blew himself up in a vehicle packed with explosives near the car of the deputy head of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in Baluchistan, a police official told Reuters.Farrukh Shehzad said the other suicide bomber entered his house and blew himself up. The dead included his guards. The explosions brought down the walls of his house and nearby offices.Although al-Qaeda is reeling from the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by US special forces, the Pakistani Taliban are still highly effective. They vowed to avenge bin Laden’s death.Read the Full Story Here.

• More deaths reported as Syrian forces storm Homs, block telecommunications.(AlArabiya).Syrian security forces stormed the city of Homs and cut off telecommunications as heavy shooting was heard while troops raided homes, Al Arabiya reported on Wednesday. Syrian activists told Al Arabiya that more deaths have been reported as the security forces swept through Homs and fired at the Khaled bin Walid Mosque. According to AFP, seven people have been shot dead by the fire of security forces in Homs.“Most land and cell phone lines and the Internet have been cut off. Tanks moved in at dawn and began firing heavy machineguns randomly at houses in Bab Tadmur, Warsha district and Bab Dreib,” Syrian activists told Reuters.“Troops also deployed in Bab Sbaa, two explosions were heard in al-Khader neighborhood and they sealed off the city center,” said a statement by Homs City Neighborhoods Union sent to Reuters.The operation comes after Syria asked Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi to postpone a visit to the Arab country for talks on the violent crackdown on protests that broke out mid-March.President Bashar al-Assad faces the biggest challenge to his rule since inheriting power from his father 11 years ago, with increased international condemnation of the violence. The European Union on September 3 added four people and three companies to an asset freeze and travel ban on Syria, where the unrest began in mid- March. A day earlier, the EU banned imports of Syrian oil. More than 2,450 civilians and 700 members of the security forces have been killed during the crackdown, while 15,000 people have been injured and at least 20,000 are in prison, according to Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights. The UN puts the death toll at more than 2,200.Security forces have failed to halt the protests, which were inspired by unrest across the Middle East and North Africa that unseated Tunisian President Zine Elabidine Ben Ali in January and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the following month. Muammar Qaddafi is in hiding after an uprising ended his control over most of Libya.Tanks and troops, largely from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, moved into Homs four months ago and occupied the main square in the city to try to end protests demanding the removal of President Assad.The Alawite sect dominates Syria’s security forces and core army units that have besieged numerous towns and cities across the country to crush the six month uprising.Homs, 165 km (100 miles north of Damascus) is mostly Sunni Muslim, like the rest of Syria. The hundreds of casualties reported in the city since the army deployment has been caused by assaults on Sunni areas. Activists have also reported the death of several Alawite residents in apparent revenge killings.Residents said an Alawite militia loyal to Assad, known as shabbiha, has played a leading role in the raids and are responsible for some of the killings, raising tension between the two sects.Activists and residents have reported an increasing number of defections among the mostly Sunni rank and file military in Homs and its surrounding countryside.Residents of Rastan, a town near Homs, published footage purportedly showing defecting soldiers on a balcony greeting a crowd of several thousand people at a pro-democracy rally in the town last week.Syrian authorities, which have not allowed independent media in the country since the uprising began in March, say there have been no defections in the military.They say the troops were deployed in Syrian cities in response to appeals by inhabitants frightened by “armed terrorist gangs.”Hmmmmm………Big noise Turkey……..silent.Read the full story here.

• Beware: Emperor Obama’s executive fiat,White House plans to circumvent Congress to spend more.(WashingtonTimes).It’s official: President Obama is presiding over the worst era of unemployment in U.S. history since this nation was embroiled in World War II. On Friday, it was announced zero net jobs were created nationwide in the whole month of August. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis stammered, “I do believe that we’re going in the right direction, but we need cooperation and it begins with members of the House and the Senate agreeing to do something now.” Going in the right direction? It’s a perfect admission of the cluelessness of this White House that the head of the Labor Department thinks zero new jobs and a permanent unemployment rate above 9 percent mean the country is headed the right way.In White House talking points leaked to The Washington Times by an executive-branch employee, administration officials are told what to say to the press and the public about Mr. Obama’s Sept. 8 speech to a Joint Session of Congress. The document is devoid of specifics, which will be proclaimed from the podium on Thursday, but it does say that ideas announced to “provide economic security for the middle class … will be both legislative and executive actions.” The key words are the last two: executive actions. This is a tacit acknowledgment that the president is planning to take unilateral action to force through what he cannot get a divided Congress to do.Mr. Obama has a profound resistance to the Constitution’s separation of powers, whereby the legislature is the lawmaking body and the executive branch implements the laws passed on the other side of Pennsylvania Ave. He’s overstepped his bounds on numerous issues already, ignoring the law to further his liberal agenda through federal agencies. Oppressive environmental regulations against businesses and property owners jump to mind.“We need to lock arms, reach across the aisle and start acting as one community,” the kumbaya White House marching orders say. Propaganda aside, a panicking Obama administration will be less collaborative than ever in the days ahead.Hmmmm……Congress must act and stop this walking,talking Doomsday machine, It’s clear that the American people had enough……..impeachment is needed.Read the full story here.

• Is the Obama Administration about to endanger American troops for political gains?(Aina).Obama Administration to Drop Troop Levels in Iraq to 3,000.The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News.Senior commanders are said to be livid at the decision, which has already been signed off by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.The generals on the ground had requested that the number of troops remaining in Iraq at the end of the year reach about 27,000. But, there was major pushback about “the cost and the political optics” of that decision that the number was then reduced to 10,000.Commanders said they could possibly make that work “in extremis,” in other words, meaning they would be pushing it to make that number work security-wise and manpower-wise.Now, sources confirm that the administration has pushed the Pentagon to cut the number even lower, and commanders are concerned for the safety of the U.S. troops who would remain there.”We can’t secure everybody with only 3,000 on the ground nor can we do what we need to with the Iraqis,” one source said.A senior military official said by reducing the number of troops to 3,000, the White House has effectively reduced the mission to training only.”There is almost no room for security operations in that number; it will be almost purely a training mission,” this official said. The official added that a very small number of troops within that 3,000 will be dedicated to counter-terrorism efforts, but that’s not nearly what Gen. Lloyd Austin, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wanted.This shift is seen by various people as a cost-saving measure and a political measure. The only administration official fighting for at least 10,000 forces to stay in Iraq at the end of the year was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sources said. But she has lost the battle.Responding to the news, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who has traveled to Iraq many times, said that in all the conversations he has had on force strength, he has “never heard a number as low as 3,000 troops to secure the gains Iraqis have won over the years.”Lieberman said his first question for the administration is whether the number is one Iraqis had requested or if it was chosen according to other criteria.Any of the plans will require Iraqi approval, and on that front, the Pentagon recently secured a commitment from the Iraqis to start negotiations, but they have not agreed to any number.”Discussions with the Iraqis on our post-2011 strategic relationship are ongoing, and no decisions on troop levels have been made,” said Panetta spokesman George Little. “We continue to proceed with troop withdrawals as directed by the president.”On Tuesday, the head of the three-province Kurdish autonomous region in the north of Iraq, warned that if American troops leave sectarian violence might resurface. Massoud Barzani urged the central Iraqi government to sign an agreement with the U.S. to keep forces in the country.Hmmmmm…….”The Commander In chief decided?”Read the full story here.

• GM aka Government Motors (Obama administration) about to hire workers?(CarAndDriver).Joe Biden : GM is on schedule. They’ve paid back a significant portion. We still hold 33.3 percent of GM common equity, but the point is that 33.3 percent is worth something. So taxpayers have an asset. But the best news is GM is talking about hiring back essentially the last of the laid-off workers by  year’s end. No one ever thought we’d get there.Hmmmm……Another Big Government expantion with taxpayer money.Read the full story here.