This time it's the Hottest 10 Female Athletes. To be fair, they claim they got their list from the readers of radaronline.com.
1. Serena Williams 2. Amanda Beard (I'm on board with the first 2) 3. Anna Kournikova (OK, ten years ago, but OK) 4. Gabby Reece (ditto) 5. Laila Ali (What? Who even has her name in the mix?) 6. Danica Patrick (She has to be driving NASCAR before she earns the right) 7. Venus Williams (Uh...NO. Not today, not 10 years ago. NO) 8. Maria Sharapova (OK, but there are other sports) 9. Steffi Graf (Are you fucking kidding me?) 10.Misty May-Treanor (Enough!)
I had to head over to radaronline.com to see how this list could happen. It was very clear...immediately. The joint is pink and full of gheyness.
Three glaringly obvious misses.
1. Allison Stokke
2. Leryn Franco. Javellin. Paraguay
3. Natalie Gulbis.
Fox needs to go somewhere else for their "hottest" lists. They always miss Marissa Tomei in the hottest 40 over 40 and this list was terrible.
I know its not a word. But what else could describe debt levels at (or over) 75% of the entire GDP. If this country were known by any other name, the IMF would be taking over.
That chart isn't some creation of a right wing racist nazi teabagging hater of a black man in the White House. Those are Obama's numbers, nicely presented by the Heritage Foundation.
So how much will we have to tax to simply pay for the spending?
This much.
I'm going to guess that corporate taxes approaching anything close to 50% is doomsday, 80%...Thirdworldian.
First the background. The song of the summer? Maybe, maybe not - but the inspiration for this post anyway. Hearing the left constantly repeat racist and nazi reminded me of the Das Racist song.
So what are opponents of socialist takeovers? Nazi's? or Racists?
OK, so opposition to tax hikes is racist.
So they are Nazi's?
Meh. Maybe the left needs a new Thesaurus.
Now if I could only get that damn song out of my head.
The Oval office. The lights are down. Three men sit next to the President's desk. The lights of Washington twinkle in the background.
The Players:
Robert Gibbs. Gibby. The Family Guy.
Rahm Emanual. Rahmbo. Dead Fish.
The President.
Act 1
The curtain raises in mid-conversation.
President: Holding a paper in his hand. "But I gave them three more weeks of cash for clunkers and THIS is how they repay me?"
Rahm: "That poll means nothing. Its not personal, they still really like you. We'll get the healthcare thing done and then we can rebuild your approval numbers by Christmas. Just imagine the images of children opening gifts in the White House again. It'll be magic."
President: "What! Not personal. That's funny coming from you. You said this would be done by August. You said those Tea Party dipshits were a flash in the pan. You said you had the party in line. What the fuck happened?"
Rahm: "Look, I accept that, but this will be done in a few weeks and people will forget. Don't worry. This thing will pass. Healthcare reform doesn't kick in until your second term. People will forget. There will be other things..."
President: "Second term! Don't insult me. Bush got reelected Rahm. Fucking Bush got reelected..." His head drops.
Rahm knows better than to speak for a minute. Just give the man a minute and he will regain his composure. Unlike that fucking wife of his...
A waiter knocks and quietly enters with the evening snack ordered earlier. Nachos. No one is hungry now, but the waiter is a welcome distraction from the tension. As he leaves, Rahm senses that the mood is lightened.
Rahm: "I have the focus group information we discussed earlier. Many of the cash for... ideas tested off the chart. Cash for spl..."
President: "ENOUGH! No more gimmicks. I want my ass out of the kettle."
Clermont, Fla., Police Capt. Eric Jensen said the state attorney will review evidence to determine whether to charge the unidentified teenager with gluing "dozens" of the posters last week to the city's light poles, public and private buildings, bridge overpasses, road signs and a mailbox.
Its a good thing these guys are on the case. We can't have the public exposed to this kind of political terrorism.
By the way, there is a contest over at InfoWars.com. Here's the banner ad.
The problem, as the task force leaders describe it:
scrap(ing) off the "very, very adhesive" substance used to hang the posters with a pen knife or putty knife, which removed the mailbox's blue paint. The mailbox then had to be primed and repainted, adding to labor costs, which totaled roughly $200.
When asked, a local employee at Home Depot
suggested a $6 bottle of Goo Gone would have done the trick.
"It does take a little rubbing," the employee said.
Click on this graph with the date of the Clean Air Act noted.
It could be one of those funny coincidences like falling in love with a girl who you've ignored for years just as she meets "the one."
Dr Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s - particularly in the Arctic - may have resulted from changes in levels of solid "aerosol" particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level - of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.
In other words, we cleared the air and allowed the sun to shine in.
Shindell's research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:
Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.
Meanwhile, levels of black-carbon aerosols (soot, in other words) have been rising, largely driven by greater industrialisation in Asia. Soot, rather than reflecting heat as sulphates do, traps solar energy in the atmosphere and warms things up.
Given the choice between acid rain and global warming, I'll take the acid. The oceans are acidifying anyway due to the increasing CO2, so might as well blow up those bag plants and burn that juicy eastern coal.
Allison Driver of Sweet Water brought this huge, 98 lbs. watermelon by The Thomasville Times office last week. The melon was so big, it had to ride shotgun in the car with him. Rather than trying to get the massive melon out of the car, Driver just got back in the driver's side to pose with his prize.
In other news, The Surginer Volunteer Fire Department has barbecue for sale for $7 per pound.
What a dummy. The Feds are always going to run this kind of stuff down.
African-American man has pleaded guilty after being accused of impersonating a white supremacist in a fictitious Facebook account to make death threats against an African-American university student. ... A court document provided by the U.S. attorney's office said Hart told an FBI interviewer that he intended the threat to be a prank "to get a reaction."
Lone nut theory?
One white guy does this and the State Controlled Media will exaust every resource looking for a conspriacy. Ask a tough question of Obama, 12 hours later all of your personal information is out there courtesy of you state departments.
Hart admitted creating the fictitious account in November, pretending to be a white supremacist outraged by the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first African-American president, the statement said.
The Detroit Free Press has been covering the final gasps of the failed Detroit Public Schools.
The Detroit Public Schools may have no choice but to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, which would make it the first big-city school district to use bankruptcy court to avoid paying millions to vendors, employees and bondholders, experts said Thursday.
The insider mismanagement, embezzlement, and shameless disregard for the kids has been captured by Mike Thompson at the Freep.
I can only imagine the outcry if an outside group, say white conservatives, were stealing from the poor and mostly black inner-city kids of Detroit. Yet in Detroit, we get reelections of criminals like Kwame Brown and can barely elect an honorable man like Mayor Bing. How long before the Mayor is run out of town for trying to curb the rampant cronyism and pay-to-play? A recent audit showed that there were at least 257 "ghost" employees - people who get paid but don't actually work.
DPS is almost 300 million in debt, yet it's infrastructure/legacy costs are just as high as when the system served a much larger population. While shrinking by almost 65,000 students between the years of 2002 and 2008 (157,003 to 94,054) may seem like a large number, the district is now approximately half the size it was in 1970. In fact, DPS spends a large part of it's budget closing schools - and it's still not enough.
DPS has a few "select enrollment" schools that are doing well. They hold these up as some sort of shield to the vast majority that are providing third world education.
A very wealthy man, Bob THompson, opens up charter schools and leases them for $1 per year as long as the kids are served properly. The Charter School System is now up to 54,000 students. More importantly, 90% of those kids are going to college. As you would expect, DPS is fighting this "black flight" tooth and nail.
For these charter kids, 83% of those who attended a four year university re-enrolled for a second year, and 57% of those who attended a two year college re-enrolled for a second year, beating national re-enrollment averages of 73% and 45% respectively. (wiki Detroit News and Free Press)
Detroit families are grabbing every opportunity to get their kids out. That any are still being forced to remain in the DPS system is criminal. Instead of using stimulus money to prop up the DPS, the money should be spent to close the remaining schools and ensure the kids get a good education in the charter system. After three decades of miserable failure, the unwinding of DPS is now inevitable - the only question is how much money is spent on a facade.
Obama has a political tin ear. We know that now, and this report from the LA Times is just another line of evidence.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.
A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
Remember all of the other special prosecutors? Yeah, the ones that went far afield from their original charge? Narrow in scope and special prosecutor do not go together. This is destined to go on until the final moments of the Obama administration.
Bracing for the worst, a small number of CIA officials have put off plans to retire or leave the agency so that they can maintain their access to classified files and be in a better position to defend against a Justice investigation.
"Once you're out, it gets a lot harder," said a retired CIA official who said he had spoken recently with former colleagues. The inquiry would probably also target private contractors who worked for the CIA during the interrogations.
And who were these techniques used on?
One passage of the CIA report declassified this year said that the method had been used "at least 83 times during August 2002" on Abu Zubaydah, the first senior Al Qaeda figure captured by the agency. Waterboarding was then employed "183 times during March 2003" on Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The initial complaints were that the techniques were supposedly used on hundreds of people. That the CIA was just grabbing any Joe (or Muhammad) and torturing them for fun. Turns out the CIA used these techniques on just a couple of the worst - hundreds of times. Meh.
Not to make light of this, but this was one of those Jack Bauer situations with the clock ticking. It's easy now to look back say you did not like how we rolled up Al Qaeda. We had the masterminds and they had the intel to stop more attacks.
Politically, this will play out poorly for Obama. This plays into the anti-American theme he keeps stumbling into. From apology tours to glad-handing vehemently anti-US dictators, Obama seems to be mixing adulation overseas for success here at home. A mistake that leads to an early exit from the White House.
By MC2(SW) Rebekah Blowers Chief of Naval Operations Public Affairs
The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) welcomed the Navy’s first Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35C Lightning II, to the fleet in a July 28 ceremony. The F-35C is the Navy’s first stealth fighter and possesses uncompromised carrier suitability and low-maintenance stealth materials designed for long-term durability in the carrier environment.
CNO Adm. Gary Roughead said this aircraft adds tremendous capability to the fleet and that “Our Sailors will never be in a fair fight because this airplane will top anything that comes its way.
The F-35C is on schedule to meet the Navy’s initial operational capability in 2015. It combines stealth with supersonic speed and high agility. The Lightning II employs the most powerful and comprehensive sensor package ever incorporated into a fighter.
This is one bad MF-er.
Performance
Maximum speed: Mach 1.67[164] (1,283 mph, 2,065 km/h) Range: A: 1,200 nmi; B: 900 nmi; C: 1,400 nmi (A: 2,220 km; B: 1,670 km; C: 2,520 km) on internal fuel[165] Combat radius: A: 610 nmi; B: 500 nmi; C: 640 nmi (A: 1,110 km; B: 910 km; C: 1,150 km) on internal fuel[165] Service ceiling: A/B/C: 60,000 ft[166] (18,288 m) Rate of climb: classified (not publicly available)
Thrust/weight:
With full fuel: A: 0.89; B: 0.92; C: 0.81[40] With 50% fuel: A: 1.12; B: 1.10; C: 1.01[40] g-Limits: F-35A: 9 g, F-35B: 7.5 g, F-35C: 7.5 g Armament
Guns: 1 × GAU-22/A 25 mm (0.984 in) cannon — slated to be mounted internally with 180 rounds in the F-35A and fitted as an external pod with 220 rounds in the F-35B and F-35C.[40] Hardpoints: 6× external pylons on wings with a capacity of 15,000 lb (6,800 kg)[40][43] and 2× internal bays with 2 pylons each[43] (Total weapons payload of 18,000 lb on A and C models.)[167], Missiles:
Internal: 4 air-to-air missiles, or 2 air-to-air missiles and 2 air-to-ground weapons. External: 6 air-to-air missiles, or 4 air-to-ground weapons and 2 air-to-air missiles[47] with combinations for the following missiles: Air-to-air missiles: AIM-120 AMRAAM AIM-132 ASRAAM AIM-9X Sidewinder Air-to-ground weapons: AGM-154 JSOW AGM-158 JASSM Bombs:
Mark 84 general purpose bombs Mark 83 GP bombs Mark 82 GP bombs Mk.20 Rockeye II cluster bomb Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser capable Paveway-series laser-guided bombs Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) (Quad launcher counts as a single air-to-ground weapon above.) JDAM-series
Time to settle in for some ol-timey fascism. Six fucking months and this President has snitch lines. I can only imaging the outcry from the left if Bush had started a snitch program for people talking badly about the Iraq war.
I've said it before and I'll say it for the 4th time. This guy is the Democrats Nixon. He has the same thin-skin and can't stand anyone anywhere disagreeing with him.
It's now our duty to report on our fellow citizens, who quote:
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
Freedom-lovers, that's right from the Whitehouse.gov website.
Sure, that kind of language conjures up images of Hitler youth turning in their Jew-loving parents to the authorities for their beloved leader. But why not have fun with it. I have sent over 20 tips to the "won" to help him track down and eradicate the kind of non-standard and unapproved subversive thought. Have fun: flag@whitehouse.gov.
Remember, our beloved leader needs YOU to snitch on your friends and family.
Peak oil alarmists have been at it for a long time and they have been wrong every single time. The old doomers (peak oil advocates) have since merged with the new doomers (global warming theorists) in an uncomfortable eco alliance. I'll explain below.
A new report in the Independent claims, yet again, we are heading to catastrophe sooner than we thought.
The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production...warned Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA).
... the IEA concluded that the global energy system was at a crossroads and that consumption of oil was "patently unsustainable", with expected demand far outstripping supply.
Oil production has already peaked in non-Opec countries and the era of cheap oil has come to an end, it warned.
Compare that with the (now) famous comments from Jimmy Carter in 1977:
Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce ... Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another six or eight years. But some time in the 1980s it can't go up much more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.
More importantly, if the peak oil doomers are right then our carbon based economy has a built in expiration date that doesn't require a cap/tax system.
Here is the Hubbert "peak oil" curve.
There are Hubbert-ian (more here at Wiki) peak curves for all fossil fuels with a consistent theme...we will be running down the back side of the curve starting in 2020 - at the latest. Which is coincidentally, the timeframe where the draconian carbon caps are scheduled to kick in.
The obvious conclusion is that natural and market forces will do all the heavy lifting promised in cap and tax - and in a similar timeframe. So if the old doomers are right, the carbon economy is resource limited and we will be forced to come up with a non-carbon alternative. If the new doomers are right, cap/tax will become a conservation program that will prolong our carbon economy by decades.
We need a new curve, let's call it the Gore Curve, to quantify how wrong both of these groups have been - and will continue to be.
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