You can read the full report here.The federal agency charged with overseeing mine safety was negligent in protecting workers at the Crandall Canyon Mine, the Labor Department's own Inspector General says in a new report.
On Tuesday, we have an opportunity to reelect a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice who has both the experience and integrity Wisconsin deserves. That person is Justice Louis Butler.
Justice Butler's 15-year record of fair and impartial judgments is something we can all be proud of as he has worked to make our state safer and stronger. With outside interest groups spending millions of dollars in advertising in an effort to buy the court, it's imperative that we protect the integrity of our State Supreme Court.
I'm proud to support Justice Louis Butler for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and I hope you will join me in voting to reelect him tomorrow, April 1.
...we discovered that many of these women are military wives who have taken on surrogacy to supplement the family income, some while their husbands are serving overseas.
Barack Obama picked up the endorsement of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar Sunday night, giving him another superdelegate supporter.
Bu$hCo's legacy just keeps building. My emphasis.Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.
“Unfortunately we were expecting one thing but we saw something else,” said Ali Hussam, 48, a teacher, who said that after Saddam Hussein the people of Basra had hoped for peace. “But unfortunately with the presence of this new government and this democracy that was brought to us by the invader, it made us kill each other.”
My emphasis.But McCain, who Mr. ****** said is a "moderate", "has given about all you can give for this country without dyin' for it."
He said McCain was on the right side of issues like being against torture of enemy combatants and global warming, which "just about crosses the bridge for them (Republicans)."
My emphasis.... my husband James Carville, a Democratic Strategist and Clinton supporter...has deep respect for his intellect, his integrity, and joins me in the sentiments expressed here. [Note: "his" = Scooter Libby, ed.]
Unless the left wakes up, this is going to continue & we are all going to suffer.Membership in the United Auto Workers fell 14 percent last year, to its lowest in nearly 70 years, as U.S. automakers, scaling back to stem losses, paid factory workers to quit or retire early.
Over the last year, J. C. Penney rolled out a powerful new marketing campaign filled with heartstring-tugging commercials, it introduced a clothing and home décor line from Ralph Lauren, and it opened 50 stores.
But consumers are not biting — and, on Friday, J. C. Penney sharply cut its earnings forecast for the first three months of the year, by 33 percent, blaming the tough economy.
That fresh sign of distress in American retailing was reinforced by a report from the Commerce Department that consumer spending remained stagnant in February, growing at the slowest pace in more than a year because of the housing slump and a weak job market.
[Bush] backed the Iraqi Government’s decision to “respond forcefully” to the spiralling violence by “criminal elements” and Shia extremists in Basra. “It was a very positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law,” the President said.
A spokeswoman for KPMG, Kathy Fitzgerald, denied the accusations. “We strongly disagree with the report’s conclusions concerning KPMG,” she said. “We believe an objective review of the facts and circumstances will affirm our position.”
No, actually it’s like a whole ton of beetle-browed cretins who pile onto any smidgen of support for Hillary Clinton like poorly housetrained labrador retrievers on a squirrel. Don’t see much of a resemblance, there.
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1.00 GBP = 2.00240 USD
"I think this was a brutal, deliberate policy to ignore a wide range of written laws and constitutional principles and the legitimate powers of Congress…It's different than anything we've seen in American history and I think it ought to be seen not as two responsible positions, but ought to be seen as a dramatic challenge to American's system of government."
Sometime during eternity
some guy shows up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cast
who really laid it on us
is his Dad
And moreover
he adds
It's all write down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won't even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
nineteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You're hot
they tell him
And they cool him
They stretch him on the Tree to cool
And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is the king cat
who's got to blow
or they can't quite make it
Only he don't come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unrealiable sources
real dead
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, "[Sometime During Eternity]" (1958)
Vice President Dick Cheney had a different message. Informed during a Good Morning America interview broadcast Wednesday that two-thirds of Americans now think the war was not worth fighting, Cheney said: "So?"
Image from the same website linked to above.
In response to a congressional inquiry, Stephen Mason, the FDA's acting assistant commissioner for legislation, wrote in a letter that his agency's claim relied on two pivotal studies sponsored by the Society of the Plastics Industry, a subsidiary of the American Chemistry Council.
One of the studies has never been published, and therefore never subjected to peer review; the second has been heavily criticized by researchers who say the results are inconclusive because of flawed experimental methods.
“I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed.”
“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,” Bush said.
My emphasis.Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.
As the storm clouds gathered, was President Bush once again asleep at the wheel?
A consistent theme in today's political and economic coverage is that Bush's failure to recognize the severity of the ongoing financial crisis and act accordingly is reminiscent of his disastrously slow and inept response to Hurricane Katrina.
Maura Reynolds and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times: "In some ways it was a throwaway line, the kind of praise a boss tosses out casually. But as the economy teetered Monday, President Bush's words to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson struck many as discordant and disengaged.
"'I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend,' Bush said as he met with his economic advisors at the White House. 'You've shown the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation.'
"Actually, many analysts and critics said, by focusing on Paulson's working hours instead of on the fear gripping Main Street and Wall Street, the president seemed to show just the opposite -- that he has failed to grasp the gravity of the country's economic crisis.
"'He has no idea what's going on. Even by his standards, he's wrong,' said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, who said he had been trying to get the president to pay more attention to the economy for more than a year.
"Bush's 'working over the weekend' line also suggested a comparison to another disaster in which he was accused of acting too slowly: Hurricane Katrina. After the storm, the president was ridiculed for praising FEMA Director Michael D. Brown for doing 'a heck of a job' -- even as thousands remained stranded in floodwaters in New Orleans."
What's the equivalent of the broken levees this time around? "[S]ome economists and lawmakers said that the administration had too strongly resisted efforts to regulate either the mortgage industry or Wall Street's new mortgage-backed securities out of a misplaced faith in free markets," Reynolds and Hook write.
Far more than at any time before, the Federal Reserve is putting
its vast resources and its reputation on the line to rescue Wall
Street’s biggest institutions from their far-reaching mistakes.Over the next few months, the central bank will lend hundreds of
billions of dollars to banks and investment firms that financed a
mountain of mortgages now headed toward default.
No one knows how many financial institutions will be looking for
money, or how much they will seek. No one knows how much in
hard-to-value securities the central bank, in return, will have to hold
as collateral.
Although Jesus' mother, Mary, could trace one ancestral line to King David, the rest of her family tree was firmly planted in Bar Oslo, Bethlehem's Norwegian Quarter. It was a vibrantly Scandinavian neighborhood, a place where all the ethnicities of Bethlehem (except the God damned Swedes) gathered to dine in the Norwegian restaurants and dance the Eikerril until the wee house of the morning.
....
Mormons would take it another step and point to God as the physical father because they believe Elohim (who looks a lot like Edgar Winter would have looked had he joined ZZ Top) came to earthin the form of a swanand impregnated Mary (presumedly after showing her his collection of Barry white LPs). But Jesus H Christopherson, that's just nuts!
No. I don't think so.
I wish it was that easy, but for those of us dirty fucking hippies who knew it was going to be the big fucking mistake that is was, is, and will remain, we're not in a "let bygones be bygones" "no use crying over spilled blood" mood.
The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it until he’s not drawing either breath or a taxpayer pension: George W. Bush is a fucking dick.
Thanks George, you evil bastard, thanks a lot.The United States has entered a recession that could be "substantially more severe" than recent ones, former National Bureau of Economic Research President Martin Feldstein said
Friday.
"The situation is very bad, the situation is getting worse, and the risks are that it could get very bad," Feldstein said in a speech at the Futures Industry Association meeting in Boca Raton, Florida.
I haven’t read the Rule in the Federal Register yet, but I would guess that the Solicitor’s new interpretation of “range” (as only applying to the areas where a species currently resides) has reared its ugly head.
I’m not sure if I can take 9 more months of this.
A California man has been fined $18,200 for two wildlife offences after pleading guilty in Saskatoon provincial court today.
....
Last week, a Tillsonburg, Ont., man was slapped with a record $175,000 fine for illegal hunting in northern Saskatchewan. Jeffrey R. Wolfe was convicted in Meadow Lake provincial court of outfitting without a licence and hunting out of season.
This is absolutely NOT a silly law. Not everyone owns a car, but I'll bet most everyone rides in a car & that child needs to be protected. In most states, the hospitals have a stash of car seats they will provide free of charge if the parents can't afford one. In my community, the fire department does this service. Your knee-jerk anti-car stuff is getting on my nerves. I live in the woods where every trip is going to be 50 miles. I don't go out much these days. I do appreciate your support of mass transit & city living for that matter. But don't let that get in the way of laws to protect babies for pete's sake.
I agree with you.
Monday's deaths brought the number to 3,979 members of the U.S.
military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003....
"We recognize it is a growing concern and we're taking it very seriously," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
And then he painted this scene: “She and John McCain are very close,” he said. “They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history and they’re afraid they’d put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other.”
Former Republican Governor Scott McCallum admitted Thursday he manipulated the judicial appointment process established by his own executive orders in order to appoint Republican Party official Mike Gableman, a McCallum donor and fundraiser, to the Burnett County Circuit Court.
“[A]s governor, the final decision to appoint a judge was mine alone…,” McCallum said through a Gableman campaign press release. The media has reported McCallum has refused press calls since an investigation by One Wisconsin Now released Wednesday showed Gableman was appointed judge after McCallum ignored established protocol for a candidate who neither applied in time, nor was a finalist recommended by McCallum’s own judicial advisory council.
The executive orders McCallum ignored, requiring a Judicial Advisory Panel screen potential judicial nominees and forward finalists for consideration to the Governor to ensure among other issues the “appointment of competent, public-minded lawyers of the highest integrity,” can be accessed here, page 2, page 3.
“Governor McCallum confirmed what we already knew, that Mike Gableman got his job as a judge because that’s what McCallum wanted for his donor and fundraiser,” said Scot Ross, Executive Director of One Wisconsin Now. “Why are there no state documents showing that Gableman ever formally applied for the job, that he was ever interviewed for the job, or that he ever answered the extensive questions designed to indicate his qualifications and competence to have the job?”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday refused pleas from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to return to peace talks with Israel, frustrating Bush administration officials....
At least someone knows how to fill a piggy bank.
Unlike most American consumers, whose failure to save has exasperated economists for years, the typical American corporation has increased its savings so sharply that it probably has enough cash on hand to completely pay off its debts.
...one third of lower middle class workers lack health insurance, while 44 percent of the working poor won’t have the minimum income needed to retire at age 67.
....
The subjective worries detected in the survey are not just free-floating anxiety; they reflect real problems of a fraying social contract.
When Palestinians broke through the barrier dividing the Gaza Strip and Egypt in January and streamed across the border by the tens of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced a moment of crisis. His phone soon rang, but the world leader offering help on the other end was not President Bush -- it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mubarak took the call, resulting in the first such contact between leaders of the two nations since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.
....
The signs of American irrelevance are apparent throughout the region. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed as a potential peacemaker by the Bush administration, mused last week to the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour that in the future it might be necessary to return to armed struggle against Israel. And Syria, which received an unexpected invitation to Annapolis, believes that the peace summit was "an exercise in public relations" and that Bush has no interest in peace, as Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha put it last week.
