Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs.
Based on an assessment of the published scientific literature, the primary conclusions presented in this report are:
• Recent rapid changes at the edges of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show acceleration of flow and thinning, with the velocity of some glaciers increasing more than twofold.... Inclusion of these processes in models will likely lead to sea-level projections for the end of the 21st century that substantially exceed the projections presented in the IPCC AR4 report (0.28 ± 0.10 m to 0.42 ± 0.16 m rise)....
• [S]ubtropical aridity is likely to intensify and persist due to future greenhouse warming. This projected drying extends poleward into the United States Southwest, potentially increasing the likelihood of severe and persistent drought there in the future...
• The strength of the [northward flow of warm, salty water in the upper layers of the Atlantic, and the southward flow of colder water in the deep Atlantic, {which} plays an important role in the oceanic transport of heat from low to high latitudes.] will decrease over the course of the 21st century in response to increasing greenhouse gases, with a best estimate decrease of 25-30%.... [RFM: this means the lower latitudes will heat up much faster than the upper latitudes, and New York City, to choose a place at random, may even get colder for some time.]
• A... doubling of northern high latitudes CH4 emissions[RFM:, a much more intense greenhouse gas that Carbon Dioxide,] could be realized fairly easily. However, since these models do not realistically represent all the processes thought to be relevant to future northern high-latitude CH4 emissions, much larger (or smaller) increases cannot be discounted.
John P. Holdren, a physicist and environmental policy professor at Harvard, will serve as the president’s science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology. Jane Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, will lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which overseas ocean and atmospheric studies and performs much of the government’s research on global warming.It struck me that maybe our perceived cynicism about politics was because bad things kept happening to us, and our apathy was because we didn't seem to be able to do much about it. I'm ready for good things to happen.
Dr. Holdren will also be a co-chairman the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology along with the Nobel Prize-winning cancer research Dr. Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Eric S. Lander, a genomic researcher.
An interesting example is looking at US inflation around WW1: Inflation skyrocketed at the end of the war as the US invested in sending its work force toward futile engagement in the trenches. And then deflation skyrocketed once they came home. The average over this period was probably somewhere in the vicinity of something small.Using the linked table -- and there's a line between quoting and stealing I'm never sure when I cross, but I make you click in to the table -- inflation in the year 1924 was zero, so we'll treat that as a turning point (even though the year before was positive, at 1.8%) and end in 1923. Inflation jumps from 1% in 1914 and 1915 to 7.9% in 1916, so we'll start in 1916. This gives us inflation rates of 7.9, 17.4, 18, 14.6, 15.6, -10.5, -6.1 and 1.8 per cent per year, which add up to a 1915 dollar being worth 93 cents at the end of 1916 and 59 cents at the end of 1923. Deflation starts in again about half-way through 1926 -- remember that's supposed to be the middle of a great economic boom -- so the 1915 dollar bottoms out at 58 cents in 1926 before zooming back up to 78 cents (nearly its 1917 value) after 1933. In 1943, it's back to 58 cents.
“Barton Biggs is no doubt a great moneyman,” writes a reader in response to a Biggs essay we published last Tuesday . “His assertion... ‘We must be pretty close to maximum bearishness’ sound[s] like... cheerleading, to me.”
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“We’ve hit the point of maximum pessimism? The point of maximum pessimism can only be known in hindsight. People will get more and more pessimistic as their personal conditions/news get worse. If you are saying it’s not possible for people to be more pessimistic than they are now, I disagree. Whether or not they do become more pessimistic is another argument and will depend on what happens to them. (I have a couple of friends who left Liberia at the start of the civil war. They were really pessimistic then. In fact, I was so concerned, I recommended counseling, but they still felt they would be back in Monrovia before Christmas. Ha. Somewhere over the next five years, they hit their point of maximum pessimism.)
Pulitzer Administrator Sig Gissler told E&P that "we are expanding the Pulitzers to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet." At the same time, they are "stressing" that all entered material should come from news outlets that publish material at least weekly, "are primarily dedicated to original news reporting, are dedicated to coverage of ongoing stories and that adhere to the highest journalistic principles."Which leaves the door open for yours truly.
“The Changing Prospects for Building Home Equity,”[PDF] tries to predict where today’s first-time buyers in the 100 biggest metropolitan areas may actually have less home equity by 2012 as a result of continued price declines. The verdict was that buyers in 33 of the markets could see a decline by 2012, including potential six-figure drops on an average home in the New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle metropolitan areas.
Stiglitz denounced Rubin's support for repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking for precisely the reasons we are now witnessing on Wall Street.... Stiglitz became the most prominent voice in Washington to say plainly that free-market absolutism, which began with the Reagan revolution and continued under Clinton (who upon being elected declared the era of "big government" was over), was ill-founded theoretically and disastrous practically....All I could come up with when asked who should be on Obama's economic team was Elizabeth Warren. But, Joseph Stiglitz should definitely be up there.
As far back as 1990, Stiglitz argued in a paper (it can be found on The Economist's Voice Web site at www.bppress.com) against securitizing mortgages and selling them
Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and plitics [sic.] had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them--or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.I've always felt like this was my eventual fate, to be a superfluous man. And Glenn Greenwald's getting me closer.
New rifts have developed on the Wilkins Ice Shelf that could lead to the opening of the ice bridge that has been preventing the ice shelf from disintegrating and breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula.
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If the ice shelf breaks away from the peninsula, it will not cause a rise in sea level since it is already floating.
A LARGE AREA OF DISTURBED WEATHER CONTINUES OVER THE SOUTHWESTERNNot because it won't be happening, but because there'll be noone staffing the National Hurricane Center.
CARIBBEAN SEA IN ASSOCIATION WITH A BROAD AREA OF LOW PRESSURE. THIS
SYSTEM REMAINS POORLY ORGANIZED AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENT...IF ANY...
IS EXPECTED TO BE SLOW TO OCCUR. HEAVY RAINS AND LOCALIZED FLOODING
OVER PORTIONS OF PANAMA...COSTA RICA...NICARAGUA...AND EASTERN
HONDURAS ARE LIKELY DURING THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS THE SYSTEM
DRIFTS WESTWARD.
Ronald Reagan was the first chief executive to whom the Presidential Records Act applied, and his papers were due to be turned over to Carlin at the beginning of Bush’s term.So, that's that.
Gonzales wanted Carlin to delay the release until June. His letter didn’t say why, but Carlin agreed. Then in June, Carlin got another memo from Gonzales—Bush’s attorney now wanted until the end of August. Carlin agreed again. The extensions continued until November, when Bush issued an executive order: effective immediately, the release of presidential records would require the approval of both the sitting president and the president whose records were in question, rather than just the former.
Sean Duffy, an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers–Camden... notes. “We began noticing a pattern: regardless of the receptacle’s label, recycling bins with little holes in the lids contained recyclables and almost nothing else, while those that lacked such holes were basically used as trash cans, even though they were recycling bins.”
The heroic hole in question measures about 6 inches in circumference, large enough for bottles made of glass or plastic. In the research team’s one-month study they observed 10 waste stations in a five-story academic building. Each station consisted of three container types: commingled glass, plastic, and aluminum; trash; and paper. Not only did the little hole increase recycling rates, but it lowered the amount of contaminants entering the recycling stream by 95%.
President George W. Bush said in 2002 the six men had been planning a bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. But Justice Department attorneys said last month they no longer would rely on those accusations to justify the continued detention of the six men.One guy planned to go fight, and he's still in the clink. You know what the military term is for people who plan to go fight? Civilians.
However they argued the Algerians should be held because they planned to go to Afghanistan in late 2001 to fight U.S. forces.
In ordering the release of the five men, Leon said the allegation was based on only one unnamed source and he did not have enough information to judge the source's reliability or credibility.
He ruled the government did provide enough evidence that one of the detainees, Belkacem Bensayah, supported al Qaeda and planned to fight against the United States in Afghanistan.
When we last saw Saber in November, he was in his sixth month of solitary confinement. Since August, he has seen us, his legal team, twice and a psychiatrist on three brief occasions. For a few minutes each day, he sees the camp guards who bring his meals. He has had no other human contact. The glaring lights in his cell are on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When we left the cell, we could hear Saber shouting -- brief, truncated cries. We could not understand what he was saying.They have gone crazy. The Rumsfeld Process was to unload every mind-breaking interrogation technique the CIA had studied on these guys. But, they didn't have anything to say. It's not like they're all criminal masterminds who knew what was on Al Qaeda's schedule for 2009. I think they were mostly just resisting the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq -- they're POWs from wars we declared won. These guys weren't even that. And, now we've driven them crazy.
The average rate of 2.61% on a one-year certificate of deposit as of Wednesday is up from 2% in early May, according to Bankrate.com, a North Palm Beach, Fla., financial-data provider. The jump comes despite Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts that have reduced the fed-funds rate to 1%. Such cuts usually lead to lower deposit rates.So, the poor little banks are getting squeezed by having to offer competitive interest rates -- they can't pay for it with bailout funds, because those are all going to pay dividends to their investors. We therefore get super-high interest rates on our savings. Like 3.93 %. Inflation in September was 4.94 %. I don't want to get all tied up in fancy Economic theory, but that's more.
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Unlike previous periods of turbulence, the Fed's rate-chopping campaign isn't relieving the pressure this time. In the past, reductions in the federal funds rate have helped level off interest rates on CDs and savings accounts, according to Market Rates Insight Inc., which tracks pricing trends for financial institutions. "This time around, it's much more fierce," says Dan Geller, executive vice president of the San Anselmo, Calif., firm.
Each tenant will receive $75,000, with the exception of one elderly tenant, who will receive $175,000.
"Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no," said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes.
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Section 382 of the tax code was created by Congress in 1986 to end what it considered an abuse of the tax system: companies sheltering their profits from taxation by acquiring shell companies whose only real value was the losses on their books. The firms would then use the acquired company's losses to offset their gains and avoid paying taxes.
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The Jones Day law firm... released a widely circulated commentary that concluded that the change could cost taxpayers about $140 billion. Robert L. Willens, a prominent corporate tax expert in New York City, said the price is more likely to be $105 billion to $110 billion.
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Lee A. Sheppard, a tax attorney who is a contributing editor at the trade publication Tax Analysts[, said] "We're left now with congressional Democrats that have spines like overcooked spaghetti. So who is going to stop the Treasury secretary from doing whatever he wants?"
Pearse Corcoran, 22, of Burlington, who cast his vote last week at Burlington City Hall, said he didn't vote for Forney.Wasn't Dubya supposed to be the Jackie Robinson of drunk drivers?
"I had heard about him. I heard it was circumstantial and all that, but I think that's irrelevant. Plus, there's the DUI thing," he said.
The finding may have... to do with... the need to stay indoors more.So, just thought you'd like a note as to what's preventing your children from leading full and emotionally enagaged lives. Please don't act on it. Thanks!
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"I strongly believe it's not the precipitation itself," [Michael Waldman, PhD, the study's lead author and the director of the Institute for the Advancement of Economics at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y] tells WebMD. "My sense is, if truly there is an environmental trigger, my guess is it is one of the factors related to indoor activity..." such as... TV viewing....
In the past 30 years, the rates of autism have increased from about one in 2,500 children to one in 150.
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The findings, he adds, should not be taken as a reason to... ban television viewing.
| First year of first Bush (43) Administration: | 9/11 |
| Policy Response: | Invade Iraq |
| Result | 2002 GOP Sweep, 2004 Reelect |
| First year of second Bush (43) Administration: | Katrina |
| Policy Response: | ... ... ... Keep Occupying Iraq |
| Result | 2006 GOP Decimation, 2008 Non-credible GOP Candidate |
In private emails with campaign supporters this week, the respected social critic noted that he had voted Green in 2004, and would be voting for the party ticket next Tuesday, as well.Although... that doesn't really sound like it was for attribution.
There were two fatalities among the 37,899 finishers of Sunday’s New York City Marathon, according to the New York Road Runners, the organizer of the event.
One was a 58-year-old man who was pronounced dead at Lenox Hill Hospital after completing the race on Sunday afternoon. The Road Runners did not release any details on the other death besides the fact that he died on site after reaching the finish line.
There were two other heart attacks reported by the Fire Department on Sunday. It said that a 59-year-old man was treated by emergency medical services after collapsing on the Queensboro Bridge before 1 p.m. He was revived to a steady pulse with a defibrillator and rushed to Weill Cornell Medical Center.I saw the guy at 107th Street getting a heart massage. This is not something that particularly picks you up when you have 3 1/2 miles left to go. It's too late to say that he's OK
A 41-year-old man also had a heart attack at 107th Street and Fifth Avenue at about 3 p.m. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital.
The race director Mary Wittenberg said that both were still alive Monday morning.
The following day, the 50-year-old research scientist Matthew P. Hardy suffered a coronary artery blockage and died at home having completed his 12th New York City Marathonp[in 2007]but it's good to hear he's alive.
[T]he G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.However, American really likes being a two-party nation. And, so I expect that there'll be huge internal struggle between the corporatist Clintonista democrats and the progressives. And since the Republican party won't be welcoming to the Rightist Democrats, the Leftist ones will be the ones to leave. And they'll need somewhere to flee to.
It was 1988, and Mary Andersen was at the Miami airport checking in for a long flight to Norway to be with her husband when the airline representative informed her....All of which is to suggest that a President Obama would be a little more opposed to luggage surcharges. Luggage surcharges are a necessary and wonderful thing, but it would be nice to have a president senstive to their possible excesses.
-You’ll have to pay a 103 dollar surcharge if you want to bring both those suitcases to Norway , the man behind the counter said.
Mary had no money. Her new husband had travelled ahead of her to Norway , and she had no one else to call.
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As tears streamed down her face, she heard a “gentle and friendly voice” behind her saying, “That’s okay, I’ll pay for her.”
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Who was the man?
Barack Obama.
Greetings from RGE Monitor!I just like the "Greetings! You're running headlong to your own doom!" format.
The financial wildfire has turned around the stagflationary trends seen earlier this year into a vicious cycle of global deflation in debt, assets, wages, and goods. Headline consumer inflation has peaked in most of the developed and emerging world, except in places where food/fuel subsidies were recently rolled back or post-Q3 data are still unavailable. According to the IMF’s October World Economic Outlook, the world’s average consumer prices have increased 6.2% y/y Q2 2008. JPMorgan expects world CPI inflation to slow to 2.6% y/y Q2 2009. Lower commodity prices subdued headline inflation and are expected to continue doing so on slackening global demand. Core inflation has yet to show a significant decline but a feedback loop of debt deflation, asset deflation, commodity deflation, wage deflation, and slower global growth will likely lead to flat or lower headline and core consumer and producer prices in Q4 2008 through 2009. But in the short- to medium-term, stag-deflation seems the most likely scenario for the world economy.
She created Alaska’s Petroleum Systems Integrity Office to oversee and maintain oil and gas equipment, facilities and infrastructure, and the Climate Change Subcabinet to prepare a climate change strategy for Alaska.I expected the least critical possible analysis of Governor Palin's background on the site, so I'm not going to criticize this. But, where's the policy expertise? She has some background in pipeline planning maybe, but energy generally? Isn't Senator McCain supposed to be Mr. Nuke? That doesn't even involve oil and gas pipelines.
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Governor Palin took on the oil companies and began a competitive process to construct a gas pipeline. Because of her leadership, work has begun on a $40 billion natural gas pipeline – the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history – to help lead our country to energy independence.
When oil and gas prices went up dramatically and the state revenues rose, Governor Palin sent a large share of that revenue directly back to the people of Alaska. She also suspended the state's fuel tax.
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As Governor, Palin is chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multi-state government agency that promotes the conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment. She also serves as chair of the National Governors Association (NGA) Natural Resources Committee, which is charged with pursuing legislation to ensure state needs are considered as federal policy is formulated in the areas of agriculture, energy, environmental protection and natural resource management.
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She also served as chair and ethics commissioner of the Alaska Conservation Commission, which regulates Alaska's most valuable non-renewable resources: oil and gas. When she found corruption there, she fought it and brought the offenders to account, even though they may have been members of her own party.
But Wyss said this could change as financial market upheaval transforms Wall Street. This month, New York City Comptroller William Thompson estimated that the city alone might lose 165,000 jobs over two years.
"We're going to see home prices coming down pretty significantly in New York," Wyss said. "A lot of people are losing jobs, and won't be getting their usual bonuses, and that leaves less money for housing."
Samuel Alito is a passionate fan of the Philadelphia Phillies, a baseball team so star-crossed that it has won the World Series exactly once (1980) in the past century.I'd responded
[T]he Phillies aren't unlucky. They've just never been dominant.So... right again.
Furious about a new political ad in North Carolina that suggests she's "godless," state Sen. Kay Hagan said she'd seek a cease-and-desist order against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole's campaign if the television spot isn't pulled in the next 24 hours.So, this is Liddy's defense.
Hagan, a Democrat from Guilford County, and Dole, the Republican incumbent, have both been engaged in a highly negative ad war over the U.S. Senate seat.
Hagan held a press conference Wednesday morning with her family and her minister in Greensboro to denounce the ad at the Presbyterian church where she is an elder and has taught Sunday school.
"Elizabeth Dole is attacking my strong Christian faith," Hagan said.
The ad is based on Hagan’s attendance at a September fund-raiser... at the home of... Woody Kaplan[, who sits] on the advisory board of the Godless Americans Political Action Committee....Yeah. That's not the same. If I work for a corporation, I'm a conduit for its money to flow to candidates that think correctly. If I belong to an organization and contribute to a candidate, I'm giving out in two ways that aren't necessarily linked.
Kaplan, who gave $2,300 to Hagan, said Wednesday that the event wasn’t associated with the Godless Americans.
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Dole’s campaign said the ad was fair game in part because Hagan has attacked Dole for being "in the pocket of big oil" just because some of her contributors work for energy companies.
Peter Schiff, president of broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital... said... "After a decade-long spending orgy, market forces are finally trying to restrict consumer spending and dampen credit. But the stimulus looks to provide a new source of funds after savings, income, and credit have been exhausted. Our imbalanced economy is in desperate need of retrenchment, but stimulus plans will effectively hold the firemen at bay while throwing gasoline on the flames."
Additionally, said Schiff, easy credit means people will spend more on consumer goods and they'll have less to spend on housing. As a result, he expects home prices to fall a lot more.
"They'll surrender all the gains they made in the past 10 years," he said, "and be even lower than they were 10 years ago."
I don't really draw any inferences from that, it's just surprising. Home sales haven't changed since I was born! 1963, 1964 and 1965, by the way, were all way higher.
EMMANUEL SAEZ[, the income-share expert and economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley]: Perhaps the best comparison is the Great Depression. During that period, the income share of the top 10% was stable. But that masked a sharp fall for the top 1%. The income share of the top 1% fell from 24% in 1928 to 15.5% in 1931.
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[It was such a big drop] [m]ostly because capital gains took a big hit, and I think it will in the coming years as well. One of the most important (factors) during the Great Depression was that profits to business took a huge hit. That affected the top 1%, but the top 10 % as a whole remained stable because the high-wage earners did pretty well during the Great Depression. Those guys rarely lose their jobs and don’t get much of a pay cut.
I really don't predict we'll hit the Bush 43 Presidency low of 7286.27 from October 9 of 2002.
I just want to saw I found that headline really disturbing. Stay good, Tanzania!
It must be noted that religious and racial sentiments are tool that can be used to tear apart the fabric of society. That is why some Americans are identifying themselves with candidates of their religion and colour.Do you even know the corporatist party candidate religions? They're both Christians, as is Cynthia, but to Christians, that covers a lot of ground. They're probably not Eastern Orthodox or Coptic. Wikipedia says they're Roman Catholic[Cynthia], Southern Baptist (née Episcopalian)[Rep] and United Church of Christ[Dem]. So, if people are separating along religious lines, the Greens are in a pretty good position.
Tanzanian politicians ought to avoid the use of such tags in elections or else the unity and peace we have been boasting about may soon melt like an ice cube does in hot water.
As penance for my earlier abuse of our candidate, I'm handing out campaign buttons from a big bag I bought. It's not going so smoothly. People seem to feel the Green Party was a factor in installing W in office, but this is why instant runoff voting is so high on our agenda.
[Tom Vanderbilt, who wrote "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do"] disappeared for three years into the university warrens of road scholars, who, more than 125 years after the advent of the automobile, are legend. "There are people with entire academic careers devoted to off-ramps," he says.This was my dream in 10th grade, by the way -- to be one of these people. I wasn't even thinking of the beneficial confusion introduction myself as a 'road scholar' might create.
Perhaps most eye-opening is Vanderbilt's declaration that "the way we drive is responsible for a good part of our traffic problems." That's right, it's not what urban philosophers Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kunstler and, well, my brother and I, in our 1993 book, "Where the Road and the Sky Collide: America Through the Eyes of Its Drivers," have been saying all along -- we are burning in traffic hell for our greedy sins of rampant urban sprawl.
No, what's gumming up the highways are hideously self-absorbed drivers who weave in and out of lanes -- creating a chain reaction of people stepping on the brakes -- desperate to get to some utterly inane appointment for which they think they can't be late. It's not that America has too many people and too few highways. Nearly 90 percent of our roads are not congested 90 percent of the time. Look at it this way: If one-fifth of solo drivers hitched a ride with neighbors or friends to the business park or mall, we'd be sailing along Happy Highway every day.
The tall and slender Vanderbilt, a rather soft-spoken scholar himself, doesn't resort to loud adverbs to make his points about congestion. In his book, he gives way to traffic behaviorist Alan Pisarski, who blames affluence for cities jammed with narcissists in BMWs. Congestion, Pisarski says, is "people with the economic means to act on their social and economic interests getting in the way of other people with the means to act on theirs."
...told the House Oversight Committee that his belief that banks would be more prudent in their lending practices because of the need to protect their stockholders had been proven wrong by the current crisis. He called this a "mistake" in his views and said he had been shocked by that.So... he didn't get that banks are run by managers, and managers have primarily short-term interests -- they want big bonuses quarter by quarter, and want to pump, vest and dump their options. He just missed it.
Greenspan said he had made a "mistake" in believing that banks in operating in their self-interest would be sufficient to protect their shareholders and the equity in their institutions.
"[P]eak oilers" looking forward to another supply crunch should consider two things. First, recession, by resetting the demand baseline downward, extends the life of oil reserves.While that makes sense, it misunderstands the peak oil paradigm, which is that consumption will outstrip discovery. By a lot. I haven't checked, but I don't expect that this is yet untrue. However, there's more.
Second, the U.S., energy-consumer extraordinaire, is more aware than ever of its oil addiction. The irony is that, as OPEC stabilizes prices, it will reinforce America's political will to deal with that.At the risk of sounding cavalier? I can't stop giggling. Everybody feeling aware? How's that will doing?
How We Ended Up Giving One Another Head, But Not in a Gay WaySo, I'm back in the headline writing roster. But, at what cost?
Update: This turns out to have been totally misguided. She's clearly identified as the Green Party presidential candidate all over her web page. I don't know if it just wasn't there when I checked, or I simply missed it. I'm probably laying my continuing sense of betrayal from Ralph Nader at Cynthia McKinney's door, which is patently unfair.
SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP
DEAR AMERICAN:
I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.
I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA
[I]f [McCain] does [catch up] it would probably be as a result of a mistake by Obama or some sort of national-security crisis rather than anything McCain does for himself.We should be really clear here. A national security crisis is not going to help John McCain -- he's not someone people are inclined to turn to in a crisis anymore. Even if there were a crisis impeding Senator Obama's ability to serve, it would help Joe Biden electorally. I'm not super sure what would happen if Senators Obama and Biden were taken out, but I do not think that a McCain presidency would be the most likely result.
The American author of a best-selling book attacking Barack Obama is being detained in Kenya because he does not have a work permit, a senior immigration official said Tuesday.As much as I like the idea of imprisoning propogandists and their sponsors, I can't support it. Restrictions on free speech aren't OK when we like the outcome.
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Obama's late father, whom he barely knew, was a Kenyan economist and the candidate is considered by many Kenyans as a native son. Minibuses are emblazoned with his picture and vendors sell T-shirts bearing his image.
The Kiyora has one very unique feature--rain water is channeled from the roof through a carbon filter, filling up a bottle between the front seats. This is the car for a water-starved future.It's good that they're thinking ahead, but they're designing for a water-starved future with a lot of rain. They should have run this past the system engineers.
John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.I'll take their word for it.
In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.
You're in the cockpit of a cargo plane in Afghanistan, transporting refugees to Germany. You're scanning the skies for Turkish, Iraqi, Pakistani or Taliban planes, as any of them might want to shoot you down for your own purpose. But, mostly you're there to ensure that pilot doesn't get lost.
The pilot lurches forward in evident abdomincal pain. Turning to him you see that his skin is dessicated. A chunk of dried flesh tumbles from his temple as you watch He is literally coming apart.
The pilot turns to you. You can see the blackened blood vessels in his yellow eyes. He doesn't speak for a moment, then starts to croak
The pilot laughs huskily
He continues to fly on in silence. You turn matters over in your mind After a few minutes, he begins to shudder violently, causing the plane to do likewise. Refugees start shouting and banging on the door.
The pilot dashes out of the cockpit too quickly and silently for you to notice
The Pilot reappears. His right arm holds the elbows of two struggling Afghanis. His left arm releases one who sinks to the floor with puncture wounds on his neck. One of the refugees breaks free and dives under your seat as the pilot focuses his attention on the other.
He begins to drink. The man under your seat begins to shuffle, whine and cry.
The pilot laughs and reaches around under you, intent on finishing his meal.
Horton[, the nation's largest home builder by unit volume,] two weeks ago sold about 2,000 house lots in Desert Hot Springs, a blue-collar community in the far reaches of Southern California's Inland Empire, for $7.8 million, according to county records. William Shopoff, a land investor who bid unsuccessfully for the property, estimates Horton paid about $110 million for the land before spending to prepare the property for development by grading and installing infrastructure such as sewers.So, maybe I should tighten the time schedule for this.
