via www.nbcnews.com
During a time when the mainstream media appears to be disconnected from reporting anything that might reflect poorly on our president, I am happy to see that NBC reported on this. It is a tragedy.
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Then and now: Breezy Point six months after Sandy
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via www.nbcnews.com
During a time when the mainstream media appears to be disconnected from reporting anything that might reflect poorly on our president, I am happy to see that NBC reported on this. It is a tragedy.
Posted at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Several cities had their snowiest single month of all time in April.
April has been a freakishly cold month across much of the northern USA, bringing misery to millions of sun-starved and winter-weary residents from the Rockies to the Midwest.
"The weather map ... looks like something out of The Twilight Zone," Minneapolis meteorologist Paul Douglas of WeatherNation TV wrote on his blog last week.
Record cold and snow has been reported in dozens of cities, with the worst of the chill in the Rockies, upper Midwest and northern Plains. Several baseball games have been snowed out in both Denver and Minneapolis.
Cities such as Rapid City, S.D.; Duluth, Minn.; and Boulder, Colo., have all endured their snowiest month ever recorded. (In all three locations, weather records go back more than 100 years.) In fact, more than 1,100 snowfall records and 3,400 cold records have been set across the nation so far in April, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
Unfortunately for warm-weather lovers, after some mild temperatures the past few days, the chill is forecast to return as the calendar turns to May: Accumulating snow is forecast overnight Tuesday night and Wednesday in Denver and in Minneapolis-St.Paul by Wednesday night and Thursday, said AccuWeather meteorologist Mark Paquette.
And across much of the central USA, temperatures will be from 25 to 45 degrees colder on Wednesday than they were Monday, according to AccuWeather. For instance, Denver should see a high of 35 degrees Wednesday, after a high near 80 on Monday.
As for the cause of the ongoing cold? A stuck weather pattern that's continued to funnel frigid air into the central USA from Canada for the past few months. Specifically, the troublemaker is what's known as a "blocking" area of high pressure over Greenland, eastern Canada and the North Atlantic Ocean, which favors a cold northwest flow of air over the central and eastern USA, Paquette said.
If you want warmth, he said, head west: Hot, dry, windy conditions will prevail this week in much of southern California and Arizona, where highs will top out in the 90s.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the snow, rain and sleet that has dragged well into April means money lost for golf courses that have been unable to open. Territory Golf Club director Doug Stang in St. Cloud was asked last week if he'll ever see anything like this spring again:
"I don't think so," he said. "This is just too bizarre."
via www.usatoday.com
I gambled that it was finally gonna stay warm and planted my warm-weather garden. It got way-laid by the repeated unseasonal cool snaps. Finally some seeds have begun to germinate and come up, but I am afraid I will have to replant some of it.
Posted at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Filed under
NewsHUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas inmate was executed Thursday evening for fatally shooting one of three people he and a partner abducted during a convenience store robbery nearly 11 years ago.
Richard Cobb, 29, didn’t deny using a 20-gauge shotgun to kill Kenneth Vandever in an East Texas field where two women also were shot and one was raped. He was convicted of capital murder.
“Life is death, death is life. I hope that someday this absurdity that humanity has come to will come to an end,” Cobb said when asked if he had any last words. “Life is too short. I hope anyone that has negative energy towards me will resolve that.
“Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger. That’s it, warden.”
But that wasn’t it.
Just before the lethal drug took effect and at the conclusion of his statement, Cobb twisted his head back, raised it off a pillow placed on the gurney and then toward the warden standing behind him.
“Wow!” the inmate exclaimed in a loud voice. “That is great. That is awesome! Thank you, warden! Thank you (expletive) warden!”
His head fell back on the pillow, and his neck twisted at an odd angle, with his mouth and eyes open.
Posted at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security is using roughly 1,000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the U.S. Army, as he and other lawmakers sharply questioned DHS officials on their "massive" bullet buys.
"It is entirely ... inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition," Chaffetz, R-Utah, said at a hearing.
The hearing itself was unusual, as questions about the department's ammunition purchases until recently had bubbled largely under the radar -- on blogs and in the occasional news article. But as the Department of Homeland Security found itself publicly defending the purchases, lawmakers gradually showed more interest in the issue.
Democratic Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., at the opening of the hearing, ridiculed the concerns as "conspiracy theories" which have "no place" in the committee room.
But Republicans said the purchases raise "serious" questions about waste and accountability.
Chaffetz, who chairs one of the House oversight subcommittees holding the hearing Thursday, revealed that the department currently has more than 260 million rounds in stock. He said the department bought more than 103 million rounds in 2012 and used 116 million that same year -- among roughly 70,000 agents.
Comparing that with the small-arms purchases procured by the U.S. Army, he said the DHS is churning through between 1,300 and 1,600 rounds per officer, while the U.S. Army goes through roughly 350 rounds per soldier.
He noted that is "roughly 1,000 rounds more per person."
"Their officers use what seems to be an exorbitant amount of ammunition," he said.
Nick Nayak, chief procurement officer for the Department of Homeland Security, did not challenge Chaffetz's numbers.
However, Nayak sought to counter what he described as several misconceptions about the bullet buys.
Despite reports that the department was trying to buy up to 1.6 billion rounds over five years, he said that is not true. He later clarified that the number is closer to 750 million.
He said the department, on average, buys roughly 100 million rounds per year.
He also said claims that the department is stockpiling ammo are "simply not true." Further, he countered claims that the purchases are helping create broader ammunition shortages in the U.S.
The department has long said it needs the bullets for agents in training and on duty, and buys in bulk to save money.
While Democrats likened concerns about the purchases to conspiracy theories, Republicans raised concern about the sheer cost of the ammunition.
"This is not about conspiracy theories, this is about good government," Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who chairs the full Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he suspects rounds are being stockpiled, and then either "disposed of," passed to non-federal agencies, or shot "indiscriminately."
If that is the case, he said, "then shame on you."
via www.foxnews.com
Posted at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A local news outlet is reporting that the home-goods retailer, Williams-Sonoma has pulled pressure cookers from their shelves in the aftermath of the Boston attack.
According to the Dedham Patch, Williams-Sonoma has pulled pressure cookers off the shelves out of respect for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Kent, a store manager of the Williams-Sonoma at the Natick Mall says:
"It's a temporary thing out of respect."
Authorities have confirmed that pressure cookers were used by the two men who planned and carried out the bombing at the Boston Marathon last Monday.
Williams-Sonoma says that the product will still be available online.
via cnsnews.com
Posted at 08:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
We have not heard ay apologies given to this guy--after charges have been dropped. The least they could do is tell about his new song about his ordeal. It is not illegal to be nutty acting. It is not illegal to be an Elvis impersonator. It may be illegal to have a song this bad though.
Posted at 07:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
George W. Bush is smarter than you
24 April 2013 by Keith Hennessey 3 Comments
The new George W. Bush Presidential Center is being dedicated this week. This seems like a good time to bust a longstanding myth about our former President, my former boss.
I teach a class at Stanford Business School titled “Financial Crises in the U.S. and Europe.” During one class session while explaining the events of September 2008, I kept referring to the efforts of the threesome of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner, who were joined at the hip in dealing with firm-specific problems as they arose.
One of my students asked “How involved was President Bush with what was going on?” I smiled and responded, “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?”
The class went dead silent. Everyone knew that this was the true meaning of the question. Kudos to that student for asking the hard question and for framing it so politely. I had stripped away that decorum and exposed the raw nerve.
I looked hard at the 60 MBA students and said “President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you.”
More silence.
I could tell they were waiting for me to break the tension, laugh, and admit I was joking.
I did not. A few shifted in their seats, then I launched into a longer answer. While it was a while ago, here is an amalgam of that answer and others I have given in similar contexts.
I am not kidding. You are quite an intelligent group. Don’t take it personally, but President Bush is smarter than almost every one of you. Were he a student here today, he would consistently get “HP” (High Pass) grades without having to work hard, and he’d get an “H” (High, the top grade) in any class where he wanted to put in the effort.
For more than six years it was my job to help educate President Bush about complex economic policy issues and to get decisions from him on impossibly hard policy choices. In meetings and in the briefing materials we gave him in advance we covered issues in far more depth than I have been discussing with you this quarter because we needed to do so for him to make decisions.
President Bush is extremely smart by any traditional standard. He’s highly analytical and was incredibly quick to be able to discern the core question he needed to answer. It was occasionally a little embarrassing when he would jump ahead of one of his Cabinet secretaries in a policy discussion and the advisor would struggle to catch up. He would sometimes force us to accelerate through policy presentations because he so quickly grasped what we were presenting.
I use words like briefing and presentation to describe our policy meetings with him, but those are inaccurate. Every meeting was a dialogue, and you had to be ready at all times to be grilled by him and to defend both your analysis and your recommendation. That was scary.
We treat Presidential speeches as if they are written by speechwriters, then handed to the President for delivery. If I could show you one experience from my t
Anyone who becomes the most powerful leader in the world is no dummy. Anyone who thinks differently are themselves plain ole stupid.
Posted at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
This story is being updated. Glenn said on radio that the suspect’s prior event referenced in the cover letter was also tagged 212 3 B, but corrected when he returned from break that they are still investigating the prior event #1648067 .
Glenn spent the night tweeting that he had big news on the Saudi national story, and he delivered it this morning when he read from a copy of the event file on Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi and delivered new information on this story.
“Now, you can tear me apart all you want. Bring it on. I’ve had my fill of it. I can take it. Bring it on. But it doesn’t make the facts go away. Any reporter, any journalist that might be listening, do not take my word for it. Take the facts that I just gave and ask the Department of Homeland Security security now: ‘Excuse me, explain away this.’ And when they come to you with more lies, you come back here. Because we have more,” Glenn said.
Here is the new information that Glenn revealed on radio today:
1) The event file created on Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi indicated on page two that he is armed and dangerous.
2) He was admitted into this country under a special advisory option which is usually reserved for visiting politicians, VIPs, or journalists.
3) One of the first excuses given by law enforcement when confronted about his pending deportation was expired VISA. According to the event file his visa is good until 11-Nov-2016.
4) Event file indicates he entered the United States on 08/28/12 in Boston, MA but says subject is a student at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio. He never showed up.
5) When an event file is created in the system the author(s) are notified via email when it is accessed and given the email address of the person accessing. As a result we know the following: After the file was created it first amended to remove the terrorism and deportation reference and then someone went back in and tried to destroy both the original and amended versions. They didn’t know there were copies.
6) The original event file was reviewed and approved by two high level agents – Chief Watch Commander Maimbourg and Watch Commander Mayfield.Here is the cover page of the event file:
Okay, although I have personally done my own due diligence regarding Glen Beck's reporting and am convinced that when he digs in and takes a stand, he KNOWS that he is correct in his facts--100% of the time--he is here inviting anyone and everyone to take a look at this?
Posted at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A chart of the crashing price of gold looks like a wedding ring rolling off a table. Gold futures for June delivery closed at $1,361 an ounce on the Comex in New York today, a drop of more than $200 in two sessions. Gold’s fall of 13 percent since April 11 was the biggest two-session decline since 1980.
Why is gold plunging? The most important factor is that global inflation is falling, reducing gold’s value as a hedge against rising prices. Gold bugs who were betting on an outburst of inflation are scrambling to reverse their bets and exit their gold positions at any price.
For consumers struggling to make ends meet, it may seem hard to believe that inflation is falling. But the evidence is clear from JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) global consumer price index, which covers more than 30 countries that collectively represent more than 90 percent of world economic output.
According to the JPMorgan index, global inflation peaked at 4 percent in 2011 and has fallen steadily since. Global prices in February were up only about 2.5 percent from a year earlier, the bank’s index says.
JPMorgan has two scenarios for what happens next. Its main one is based on a “bottom-up” collection of analysts’ forecasted price trends sector by sector around the world. That shows inflation rising very slightly from its current level for the rest of 2013. In contrast, JP
It is one view, but it is a slanted one--as are all things Bloomberg.
Posted at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)