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Good story here. The guy sitting next to him thought he was very creepy (note body language). The girl refused to go out with him.
Good story here. The guy sitting next to him thought he was very creepy (note body language). The girl refused to go out with him.
Technicians who tested a Toyota Prius after its owner claimed its gas pedal stuck were unable to recreate the same condition, according to a draft congressional memo obtained…by CNN.
In addition, owner Jim Sikes’ claim that the car kept going even though he slammed on the brake while his gas pedal was stuck to the floor does “not appear to be feasibly possible,” said the draft, obtained from sources familiar with the investigation.
The memo, written for members of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, summarizes the observations of a representative present at the testing of the Prius, as well as another car “allegedly involved in sudden unintended acceleration events…”
Technicians from Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration took Sikes’ Prius on a test drive and attempted to duplicate the same experience, the memo said, but were unsuccessful. A congressional staffer and another Toyota technician tested another Prius.
“Every time the technician placed the gas pedal to the floor and the brake pedal to the floor, the engine shut off and the car immediately started to slow down,” the memo said. “NHTSA and Toyota field representatives reported the same results with the 2008 Prius owned by Mr. Sikes.”
“These findings certainly raise new questions surrounding the veracity of the sequence of events that has been reported by Mr. Sikes,” said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, and ranking member on the committee.
There just may be a few concerns about Mr. Sikes’ truthfulness. He’s a bankrupt realtor $700,000 in debt including months behind on payments for his leased Prius. Which I imagine Toyota has threatened to repo.
The bankruptcy statement isn’t clear on how much he makes from his AdultSwingLife website.
Assailants gunned down three people returning from a party at a U.S. Consulate employee’s home in the Mexican city of Juarez, including a pregnant U.S. government employee and her husband, in two attacks a few minutes apart that prompted a furious response from the White House on Sunday.
The White House said President Obama was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the slayings, which occurred in broad daylight. They appeared to be the latest sign of the surge of drug violence in Mexico in recent years, which has claimed thousands of lives in border cities such as Juarez. But it was unusual for U.S. citizens to be slain — particularly an American government employee.
State Department officials said authorities were still investigating whether the victims were targeted by drug gangs, but it did not appear that the slain consular employee was involved in counter-narcotics work. Her in-laws identified her as Lesley A. Enriquez, 35, of El Paso, just across the border. She was a locally hired employee of the consulate whose job involved helping U.S. citizens, American officials said. Her husband, Arthur Redelfs, 34, worked for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department, according to his brother, Reuben Redelfs.
First the Mexican Military terrorizes Texas border town and now this. I have to wonder… why can’t Obama keep us safe from terrorists?
/sarcasm
The opposition in Georgia has condemned a fake television report about the invasion of the former Soviet Republic by forces from neighbouring Russia. Georgia President Mikheil Saakhasvili has defended the report, following widespread panic caused by the broadcast.
Russian warplanes were seen flying over the country in a fake news report aired nationwide late Saturday by Georgia’s commercial Imedi television network.
A nervous looking presenter said Georgia had been invaded by Russian troops and that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was among those killed. But Imedi was showing old footage about the brief war between Georgia and Russia in 2008 over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Viewers had been cautioned the report was fake, but many apparently did not see that warning.
Soon panic broke out with people seen running in the streets of the capital Tbilisi, where the network said Russian tanks had arrived.
Local media reported a record number of calls to emergency services and several incidents of heart attacks and fainting among shocked viewers, but officials said no deaths had been reported.
WTF?
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This Episode’s Executive Producer: Josh Feldman
Associate Executive Producer: Jaap Buitendijk Artwork by: Paul T. Knighthoods: Jaap Buitendijk – Dame Julie Lee Listen to show by clicking ► Direct link to show. |
Mexican Military Copter over US Neighborhood
The Zapata County sheriff Thursday was questioning why a Mexican military helicopter was hovering over homes on the Texas side of the Rio Grande.
It was one of the more jarring incidents of the fourth week of border tensions sparked by drug killings, and rumors of such killings, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said he’d reviewed photos of the chopper flown by armed personnel Tuesday over a residential area known as Falcon Heights-Falcon Village near the binational Falcon Lake, just south of the Starr-Zapata county line. He said the helicopter appeared to have the insignia of the Mexican navy.
“It’s always been said that the Mexican military does in fact … that there have been incursions,” Gonzalez said. “But this is not New Mexico or Arizona. Here we’ve got a river; there’s a boundary line. And then of course having Falcon Lake, Falcon Dam, it’s a lot wider. It’s not just a trickle of a river, it’s an actual dam. You know where the boundary’s at.”
Shoot it down I say.
Found by Aric Mackey.
Arriving at Harv’s Metro Car Wash in midtown (Sacramento) Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. “They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending,” says Harv’s owner, Aaron Zeff.
The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff’s on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was … 4 cents.
Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv’s with an obligation of $202.35.
Zeff, who also owns local parking lots and is the president of the Midtown Business Association, finds the situation a bit comical.
“It’s hilarious,” he says, “that two people hopped in a car and came down here for just 4 cents. I think (the IRS) may have a problem with priorities.”
Gotta pay down the deficit somehow.
The AP reports:
In a televised speech, Chavez said: “The Internet can’t be something free where anything can be done and said. No, every country has to impose its rules and regulations,” Chavez said.
And Australia, which is supposed to be “freedom land”, is following along:
“The government does not support Refused Classification (RC) content being available on the Internet,” a spokeswoman for the minister told AFP.
“The government’s proposal will bring the treatment of overseas-hosted content into line by requiring ISPs to block overseas content that has been identified as being RC-rated,” she said. “There are no plans to block any other material that is not RC,” she added.
No plans… yet.
Have these chuckleheads learned nothing from the past? Only the winners get to rewrite the history books. Plus, there are just too many people still around who actually lived through the past twenty years who know what really happened. Or are books and whatnot from these people meant to be fiction?
Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds. To hear them tell it, 9/11 was so completely Bill Clinton’s fault that it retroactively happened while he was still in office. The Bush White House is equally blameless for the post-9/11 resurgence of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. Instead it’s President Obama who is endangering America by coddling terrorists and stopping torture.
Could any of this non-reality-based shtick stick? So far the answer is No. Rove’s book and Keep America Safe could be the best political news for the White House in some time. This new eruption of misinformation and rancor vividly reminds Americans why they couldn’t wait for Bush and Cheney to leave Washington.
But the old regime’s attack squads are relentless and shameless. The Obama administration, which put the brakes on any new investigations into Bush-Cheney national security malfeasance upon taking office, will sooner or later have to strike back. Once the Bush-Cheney failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran again come home to roost,
as they undoubtedly and explosively will, someone will have to remind our amnesia-prone nation who really enabled America’s enemies in the run-up to 9/11 and in its aftermath.
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
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Tony Blair is preparing to launch a “faith offensive” across the United States over the next year, after building up relationships with a network of influential religious leaders and faith organisations.
With Afghanistan and Iraq casting a shadow over his popularity at home in Britain, Blair’s focus has increasingly shifted across the Atlantic, to where the nexus of faith and power is immutable and he is feted like a rock star.
According to the annual accounts of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes cohesion between the major faiths, the foundation is to develop a US arm that will pursue a host of faith-based projects. The accounts show that his foundation has an impressive – and, in at least one case, controversial – set of faith contacts. Sitting on some £4.5m in funds as of April last year, mostly gathered through donations, it is now well placed to make its voice heard.
The foundation’s advisory council of religious leaders includes Rick Warren, powerful founder of the California-based Saddleback church. It attracts congregations of nearly 20,000 and is reportedly one of the largest in the US. Warren, who has addressed the UN and the World Economic Forum in Davos, has been named one of the “15 world leaders who matter most” and one of the “100 most influential people in the world”…
That Blair, a charismatic politician driven by faith, should be at home across the Atlantic is no surprise to political analysts. “He comes across as confident and persuasive,” said Professor Shawn Bowler, of the University of California at Riverside. “He does not talk like a modern robo-candidate in the way so many US political figures do.” Unlike in the UK, Blair’s religious fervour is seen as a strength. “Blair is very open about his faith and that plays a lot better in the US than in Britain,” Bowler said…
Maybe he’ll invite George W. Bush to aid him in his New World Crusade.
 
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Telegraph.co.uk
Toby Elles, 22, made the discovery after burning the food when he fell asleep while cooking.
After lifting off the scorched bacon Mr Elles, from Salford, Lancs, could not believe his eyes when the Christlike image stared back at him.
The face is complete with eyes, nose, a beard and is framed by long flowing hair.
Mr Elles, a cashier for Halifax Bank, said: “I fell asleep cooking some bacon and it had burned this face onto the pan, it’s some kind of miracle.
It just keeps on happening… Har!
Found by McCullough.
AMESBURY, Mass. –Fluoride is added to the water most of us drink because the government believes it’s a safe and inexpensive way to prevent tooth decay. However, Team 5 Investigates found the Amesbury Water Department pulled fluoride from its system amid concerns about its supply from China. Department of Public Works Director Rob Desmarais said after he mixes the white powder with water, 40 percent of it will not dissolve.
“I don’t know what it is,” Desmarais said. “It’s not soluble, and it doesn’t appear to be sodium fluoride. So we are not quite sure what it is.” Desmarais said the residue clogs his machines and makes it difficult to get a consistent level of fluoride in the town’s water. Since April the fluoride pumps in Amesbury have been turned off and they will stay that way until Desmarais can find out what’s in the fluoride that’s imported from China. Both state and federal health officials told Team 5 Investigates that Chinese fluoride is safe.
The Department of Public Health said it believes that more than 650,000 customers in 44 Massachusetts communities are getting the flouride in question and only Amesbury has temporarily stopped using it. Approximately 1,000 water systems in the United States use the additive to adjust the fluoride in their water supply, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Since 2007, most of the sodium fluoride has been imported from China because it’s the least expensive on the market. “I don’t think that when it comes to something that I ingest every day that the lowest bidder is good enough,” Stewart said. Testing continues to determine the precise composition of the residue.
If the government says it’s safe that’s good enough for me, how about you?
Probably NSFW.
Found by Cináedh.
Cato’s Julian Sanchez says it’s vague:
Census records, of course, are not mentioned, and the statutory language protecting those records from legal process is unusually strong and unqualified. On the other hand, neither does the amended language explicitly override the federal statutes protecting the specified categories of records. Rather, it adds a layer of oversight for several types of requests that are implied to fall within the scope of §215. Indeed, at the time, this portion of the Reauthorization Act was publicly portrayed as increasing protections for sensitive records.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily impossible for those records to ever be obtained via a §215 order. As Weich’s letter clearly says, the Census Act prohibits “the Commerce Secretary and other covered individuals from disclosing protected census information.” But as the Supreme Court clarified in St. Regis Paper v. United States, that confidentiality requirement is only binding on specific covered individuals. If the government is able to get its hands on a copy of a census record by serving some non-covered individual, the record itself is not off limits.
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