The Taliban is wired, and they’re pouring over the military intelligence published by WikiLeaks earlier this week.
"We are studying the report," Zabihullah Mujahid, a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Taliban in Afghanistan, told British television station Channel 4.
"We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the U.S. If they are U.S. spies, then we know how to punish them."
“I’ll let those that sat in the cheap seats a year-and-a-half ago and wanted to walk away” from a milion workers, he continued, “explain to every one of those workers why they made that decision.”
Finally, he wrapped it up: “And then you should ask Mr. Limbaugh — I don’t know what kind of car he drives, but I bet it’s not an F-150.”
The F-150 truck, we should note, is made by Ford, which didn’t get federal rescue funds.
That has to be the biggest howler I have ever seen. I bet he doesn't drive a car made by the only American car maker that wasn't bailed out. Hell, the only American car that I will even consider buying is a Ford. All that bailout did was screw over the bondholders and gave a huge chunk of stock to the UAW. Then the idiotic "Car Czar" threw a bunch of darts at a map and closed a bunch of dealerships that had been in business for 70+ years. I saw the car bailout as what it was; the government blowing $60 billion to bail out the UAW.John Metzler, who ran the historic military burial ground for 19 years, said he accepts "full responsibility" for the problems.
But he also denied some of the findings by Army investigators and suggested cemetery employees and poor technology were to blame for remains that may have been misidentified or misplaced. He said the system used to track grave sites relied mostly on a complicated paper trail vulnerable to error.
In the 19 years since this guy was the head why couldn't they just change the system to something more advanced. Hell, a Microsoft Access program in Office 2003 could track the remains of 6600 people. Now we might have to do some DNA testing in order to find out what remains are where. What a joke. I wish we could bring criminal charges against this Metzler character.
40,816,326 New Cars
The 2010 Volkswagen Jetta TDI wins Kiplinger's Best in Class honors for cars in the $20,000-to-$25,000 price range. At a sticker price of $24,500 each, $1 trillion would let you drive away with a fleet of Jettas equivalent to 30% of all the cars already on U.S. highways. (The total U.S. car fleet is more than 135 million, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, excluding trucks and SUVs.)
Imagine a fleet of 40.8 million cars driving down the road paid for with Red Chinese money? That is pretty much what Obama spent in just 9 months. That is just breathtaking.
140 Billion Hours of Labor
That's calculated at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Still hard to get your mind around? How about this: One trillion dollars is enough to hire all 2.8 million residents of the state of Kansas -- men, women and children -- in full-time, minimum-wage jobs for the next 23 years.
Too bad with all that spending we still can't beat that 9% unemployment rate. I wonder if you just took that trillion and permanently slashed payroll taxes by 1/2 and see how many jobs that would be created that way?
1.33 Trillion Chocolate Bars
Got a hankering for something sweet? A sweet $1 trillion will buy you that many 1.55-ounce Hershey's Milk Chocolate bars at 75 cents apiece. That's 64 million tons of chocolate, equivalent to the weight of more than 150,000 Boeing 747-400s.
If you take the figure 3 billion pounds of chocolate is consumed per year that means that works out to 42.6 years of chocolate consumption. Now that is a lot of chocolate.
Replace Annual Incomes for 19.2 Million American Families
Median household income in the U.S. (half the families earn more, half earn less) was $52,029 in 2008, according to the Bureau of the Census. At that level, $1 trillion would be enough to cover the incomes of a sizable percentage of total U.S. family households. There are no recent official estimates, but the 2000 U.S. Census figured there were about 71.8 million family households.
In other words it could pay the entire salary of 26% of all working families in America. If you dropped the figure to like $40,000 you could pay for millions more.
The worst part of all this spending is that most of that money seems to flushed down the toilet. We see no decent return for that amount. No growth or a reduction in unemployment. Instead we just borrow more from the Red Chinese and set that money on fire. I wish we could take away that credit card for a few months and learn some actual fiscal discipline for once.
The Times cited one 2008 document that included a detailed interview with a Taliban fighter considering defection.
The man, who names local Taliban commanders and talks about other potential defectors, is identified by name, along with his father's name and village.
In another case from 2007, a senior official accuses named figures in the Afghan government of corruption.
"The leaks certainly have put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans," a senior official at the Afghan foreign ministry, who declined to be named told The Times.
I hope the US can get these people out of the country because it is a matter of time before the Taliban kidnaps these people in the middle of the night and tortures them to death. I wonder if Julian Assange will be like Lady McBeth and just can't quite scrub the blood off his hands if the Taliban nabs these people.President Obama will visit the Puget Sound area next month to talk about the economy and headline a fundraiser for Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., an administration ally locked in what she describes as a close reelection race.
A White House spokesman would not give a date, but Murray campaign spokeswoman Julie Edwards indicated the visit will be August 17.
He has pretty much doomed the chances of every candidate he has stumped for in the past. Washington State is pretty deeply blue plus Murray has been Senator for 17 years. So if they lose here then Obama's vulture streak will take on epic proportions. I wonder if he should avoid White Sox games in order for them to win the AL Central?The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.
Well, I guess it would be up the Congress to pierce the Iron Curtain suddenly thrown up in from of the SEC. Paging Paul Ryan could you send some of your staffers down there to get the real skinny when the need arises. I thought Obama was all about the transparency.
Doubts had surrounded the 49-year-old's future ever since a tense meeting with AFA president Julio Grondona on Monday and newspapers had spent the day speculating on who would succeed the man who led the team to victory as star player at the 1986 World Cup.
I guess he can go back to bad-mouthing the US and sniffing that "Bolivian Marching Powder" again.The declaration and attack marked a shift in strategy for France, usually discrete about its behind-the-scenes battle against terrorism.
"We are at war with al-Qaida," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday, a day after President Nicolas Sarkozy announced the death of 78-year-old hostage Michel Germaneau.
The humanitarian worker had been abducted April 20 or 22 in Niger by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, and was later taken to Mali, officials said.
Well, at least France is finally understanding the true face of these al-Quida scumbags. Yeah they will execute some 78 year old aid-worker in a minute if they get the chance. Let's hope they channel the spirit of Napoleon in this war and not the spirit of Petain.Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.
Now the Obama guilt trip followed with some Chicago style demonization will be directed at UnitedHealh and Blue Cross Blue Shield to make them toe the line. Of course they won't and more threats will be issued etc.
Suzanne Nossel, chief of operations for Human Rights Watch, added a novel take: “I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualifications or views.”
Mother Jones’s Stein loved the idea. “That’s excellent! If enough people – people on this list? – write that the pick is sexist, you’ll have the networks debating it for days. And that negates the SINGLE thing Palin brings to the ticket,” he wrote. . . .Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said no Republican was willing to back a comprehensive energy bill, a development he called "terribly disappointing."
There were no Republicans willing to lose their jobs over a tax that will be levied on all Americans as the utilities pass it on to consumers. This one bill would have raised the prices on everything in the US since almost all of them need electricity in order for them to be produced. I am convinced that it would have made us spiral into a double dip recession. With Cap and Tax dead the idea that you should never raise taxes (especially on everything produced using electricity in the US) will still hold true.
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
The day was July 21, 1944. Bielecki was walking in broad daylight down a pathway at Auschwitz, wearing a stolen SS uniform with his Jewish sweetheart Cyla Cybulska by his side.
His knees buckling with fear, he tried to keep a stern bearing on the long stretch of gravel to the sentry post.
The German guard frowned at his forged pass and eyed the two for a period that seemed like an eternity — then uttered the miraculous words: "Ja, danke" — yes, thank you — and let Jerzy and Cyla out of the death camp and into freedom.
I would go with Johnny Depp to play Bielecki and maybe Kate Winslett with dyed hair to play Cyla. It would be like the Notebook with SS guards. Maybe like Letters to Juliet meets the Great Escape.It is a sloppy term that might include the academic class in the university that educates our children in college. The upper echelons that run government departments constitute part of this cultural elite. So does an entertainment cadre that oversees television and Hollywood. Corporate managers are elites as well.
There is no racial, regional, religious, or tribal commonality. One shared allegiance perhaps is to higher education that certifies the cultural elite by diplomas of all sorts from a “good school,” as well as a respectable salary and a nice home with appurtenances. The good life of the elite is defined by both the absence of worry about necessities, and a certain status that accrues from properly recognized advanced education and sensitivity.
I think them being divorced from actual labor and running a business is part of why we can't get the unemployment under 10%. They think that all people need is more grant money or more contacts on a foundation and jobs should be flowing like crazy. They haven't had to run a business in order to make money so the business can continue. That is why they have such an aversion to profit since they have never had to make it or their company goes out of business. I mean no one is going to close Cal Berkley even if it lost money for 20 years strait.
What is so odd to me is that they can be okay with Leo DiCaprio making $20 million a picture but can't stand when a CEO makes $1 million or more a year. They both do a job that the vast majority of Americans cannot do. Only a handful of people could open a $60 million movie or run multi-billion dollar company. So they are both paid what they are worth. However, the left hates the CEO for whatever reason and treats DiCaprio with reverence and awe.
Boyd argues that MySpace's inability to deal with spammers added to the feeling of urban blight that overtook the site, leaving derelict profiles "covered in spam, a form of digital graffiti... As MySpace failed to address these issues, spammers took over like street gangs."
Subsequent media coverage of the "death of MySpace" was a direct result of this flight, says Boyd. For example, she cites a 2009 New York Times article that was entitled "Do You Know Anyone Still on MySpace?" despite the fact that at the time Facebook and MySpace has roughly equal numbers of users.
The problem too was that the corporations and the celebrities jumped onto Facebook almost en mass. In other words the so-called cool kids with the flashy cars and the big bank accounts were on Facebook. I guess MySpace was the inner city public high school with its gang problems, its giant crappy advertisements, and graffiti everywhere. I remember that most of the MySpace sites you went to had floating crap everywhere and just looked thrown together and haphazard.Arena Pharmaceuticals' lorcaserin is one of three drugs that are boosting hope for a new generation of more effective weight-loss medicines. One gets a Food and Drug Administration review on Thursday and the others, later this year.
In the study, lorcaserin (lore-KASS-ah-rin) caused more people to lose at least 5 percent of their body weight over one year, more than twice the rate achieved by those on dummy pills.
There is also this drug in the works as well:Updating its estimate of the impact the controversial new law has had, the White House now projects that the vast spending act has created or saved between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs.
That's up from the estimate of 2.2 million to 2.8 million jobs that was released in the first quarter of the year from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The new estimate says the act is on track, if it hasn't already reached, the promise that the stimulus act would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010.
Well, if you actually break that number down. They spent $862 billion to "save" 3.6 million jobs. That means that each job cost $239,444 to save. If each of those jobs paid the median yearly wage of $32,140 that means that $207,304 extra was needed to generate each job. I know that most of that amount was funneled off for Democrat pet projects and shovel ready BS but you get the point.Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unveiled the new six-month moratorium, worded differently from an earlier drilling ban after a U.S. appeals court struck down the original moratorium last week.
"I am basing my decision on evidence that grows every day of the industry's inability in the deepwater to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill and to operate safely," Salazar said.
The new ban will extend until November 30 and affects the same drill rigs as before, although it is based on types of drilling technologies rather than on water depths as the old one was.
The oil companies won't simply stack up their rigs until November 30. They will move them to Brazil or the North Sea or somewhere else where they won't be losing millions per day. So Obama pretty much ceded those jobs that were once held by American oil field workers to someone living in Brazil or Sweden.LeBron James has made his decision. He's going to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat.
James made his long-awaited announcement in a hastily arranged ESPN special Thursday night in Greenwich, Conn., and James wasted no time in making a prediction: "We're going to be a real good team."
I stopped watching SportsCenter for a while just to avoid all the annoying speculation. I was also tired of the army of talking heads that were sure where LaBron was going because they heard from someone close to his Camp that LaBron was wearing Bermuda shorts and thus was going to Miami. I guess on the upside NBA was finally relevant again for like 5 minutes.Dell, along with many other manufacturers of PCs, used capacitors produced by Nichicon, a Japanese electronics giant. According to court documents [PDF] in the suit against Dell brought by a major customer, Nichicon sold faulty capacitors, a key motherboard component, that leaked and failed with alarming regularity -- and Dell knew it.
In his excellent piece in the New York Times this week, reporter Ashlee Vance refers to an internal study by Dell that predicted its Optiplex line of business computers containing Nichicon capacitors were expected to have a failure rate of 97 percent over three years.
If they went ahead and used these capacitors knowing full well that they would fail and then covered it up then they join Sony in my product dustbin. This is especially bad when it comes to a computer since I know how bad people take it when their computers die.
I have bought an HP Netbook and I am very much enjoying it so far. I was thinking of upgrading my desktop so I can take advantage of Virtualization Technology and I was looking at the Dells. I can now stop and look at the HPs and Acers now instead. I don't buy things from companies that attempt to defraud their customers.
Japan's public broadcasting network, NHK, added to the sport's woes Friday by announcing it might drop coverage of the event. The network said it had received 8,200 public comments, only about 10 percent of which supported going ahead with airing the Nagoya Basho.
"We will wait until after the Sumo Association announces its measures and decide what to do after that," said NHK spokesman Yuichiro Ishii. "We will weigh viewers' opinion about whether it should be shown."
That would be the only time in the postwar era where a tournament was canceled. It all started with a blackmail scheme by Ozeki Kotomitsuki.
The FBI said that one of the suspects, Anna Chapman, would go to a coffee shop in Manhattan on Wednesdays and set up her laptop. A little while later, a minivan the FBI knew was used by a Russian official would drive by. To the naked eye, there was no contact between them.
But the FBI said it figured out that Chapman's computer was set to link wirelessly to a laptop in the minivan, using a standard, built-in Wi-Fi chip. In the short time the computers were close, they could transfer encrypted files between each other.
The agency figured this out with commercial Wi-Fi analysis software, not with something from Q's lab.
Yup she just connected to a regular wireless network sent out by a Russian official from a minivan. No secret networks or hidden drop sites or anything like that. Hell, even sending coded messages in the newspaper to a hidden drop box would have been harder to crack.The all-cash deal announced Thursday could signal Google's intention to mount a challenge to other online travel services such as Expedia and Orbitz.
I wonder if they are going to start selling airline tickets as well in a Google Travel Service sort of thing? I bet some airlines would hate it because it would let people search for the lowest fares using Google search technology. Although the idea that the airlines could pay Google for better placement above their rivals might make them feel better. The idea that you could book your flight right from Google sounds pretty good as well. All they need is Google Bank and they can handle everything.
So Maradona stared into a Fox Sports camera on Thursday and with a mock German accent asked:
“What’s the matter Schweinsteiger? Are you nerrrvoushhh?”
I really hope Germany kicks the crap out of Argentina so we can see the Hand of Cocaine sniffing and crying on the sidelines after the game. Maybe he will pull a Woody Hayes and punch a German player so he gets banned from the sport for life.
