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Found by Gary, the dangerous infidel
Bloomberg.com: Economy Peachy.
The U.S. lost more jobs in 2008 than in any year since 1945 as employers fired another 524,000 people in December, indicating a free-fall in the economy just days before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.
“Consumers are now going to get more and more scared at the prospect of losing their job,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. Obama’s proposed fiscal stimulus “needs to be big, needs to be bold, needs to be swift. If they can do something quickly we can limit the hemorrhage by mid-year.”
The Labor Department reported that the nation lost 2.589 million jobs in 2008, just shy of the 2.75 million decline at the end of World War II. The unemployment rate climbed more than economists forecast, to 7.2 percent in December, the highest level in almost 16 years.
Texas Death Row Inmate Pulls Out Eye, Eats It
AP/TDOCJ A Texas death row inmate with a history of mental problems pulled out his only good eye, authorities said Friday. Andre Thomas told officers he ate it.
Thomas, 25, was arrested for the fatal stabbings of his estranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter in March 2004. Their hearts also had been ripped out.
While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Thomas similarly had plucked out his right eye before his trial later in 2004. A judge subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.
A death-row officer at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice found Thomas in his cell with blood on his face and had him taken to the unit infirmary.
“He will finally be able to receive the mental health care that we had wanted and begged for from day 1,” Bobbie Peterson-Cate, Thomas’ trial attorney, told the Sherman Herald Democrat. “He is insane and mentally ill. It is exactly the same reason he pulled out the last one.”
He wasn’t judged insane for the first eye? Or the hearts he ripped out? Oh, right, Texas justice.
Rescuers are baffled over ailing pelicans — This is peculiar because this was the first year that I personally noticed a lack of Pelicans in the SF Bay Area. The bird may be doomed!
Hundreds of brown pelicans have turned up sick or dead in the last two weeks from Baja California to Washington, stumping scientists who suspect toxic algae, disease or unpredictable weather conditions.
The birds with distinctive prehistoric silhouettes are turning up disoriented in odd places, some with discolored or bruised pouches. They fly onto highways and parking lots or sit quietly in backyards where they are rescued.
The International Bird Rescue Research Center, in Cordelia near Fairfield and in San Pedro in Southern California, is treating 75 birds, 15 of them received Thursday. Some birds have recovered.
Veterinarians and researchers are considering a range of causes, including natural toxins in algae called domoic acid or a virus or unpredictable weather conditions that may have thrown the birds off of their feeding patterns.
American Expess has increased the cost of borrowing on one of its credit cards to 46 per cent — more than 30 times the Bank of England base rate. The company now charges 46 per cent APR on the card, making it Britain’s most expensive credit card. Consumer groups said the cost of borrowing on some credit cards had now lost all touch with the base rate. A series of other cards also have APR over 35 per cent — despite interest rates now being at the lowest level since the Bank of England was set up in 1694.
Other cards include Virgin Money American Express at 37 per cent and Citi MasterCard at 41 per cent. Consumer group Which!’s credit card expert Martyn Saville said the Amex rate was ‘ridiculous’. He said: ‘This is over 30 times base rate. ‘Credit card interest rates now bear no resemblance to Bank rates — it is just about what companies think they can get away with. ‘Even at 19.9 per cent it is far too high.’
The Amex rate was sent soaring from 36.6 per cent to 46 per cent because the issuer increased the annual charge paid by customers from £120 to £150.
This is LOL funny. My thoughts? Use cash before it becomes illegal to do so.
A reminder as to who is actually behind the mess we are in. Curiously you never see or hear this stuff anywhere and only occasionally on FOX.
A New Year’s Day shooting in which a subway police officer fired a deadly shot into the back of an unarmed man has the San Francisco Bay Area demanding answers as authorities appeal for patience…
The young men had been celebrating the new year at a popular waterfront tourist spot, The Embarcadero. They were heading home when police pulled them from the train car. Some of the young men were handcuffed, but not 22-year-old Oscar Grant. The video from the anonymous passenger shows Grant seated on the floor with his back against the wall.
Grant holds up his hands, appearing to plead with police. Burris said Tuesday that Grant was asking police not to use a Taser.
Seconds later, police put Grant face-down on the ground. Grant appears to struggle. One of the officers kneels on Grant as another officer stands up, tugs at his gun, unholsters it and fires a shot into Grant’s back.
The bullet went through Grant’s back and then ricocheted off the floor and through his lungs. Grant…died seven hours later, KTVU reported.
Unconscionable, unforgivable.
Watching America : Where Did All the Boys in the White House Go? — This is an interesting article. In fact all the recent Presidents (except Reagan/Bush I) have only girls. And we see the results. (No letters please!). The Chinese are preoccupied with this since they have limits on number of children they can bear.
At least in one aspect, U.S. President-elect Obama did not bring change to the White House. Like Presidents Bush, Clinton, Nixon, and Johnson—Obama will spend several years in a White House with no boys roughhousing inside. In the 80 years before Obama, only President Kennedy brought a boy to the White House.
The 19th Century White House Teemed with Boys
In some countries of the world, not having a son is still seen as almost a kind of deficiency, especially for leaders. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has two sons, as does Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi. French President Sarkozy has three sons. Even Letsie III, the king of Lesotho, a country in Southern Africa, has a son.
Evidently, in determining who is fit to be a national leader, American voters transcended this overly simplistic concept very early on, but in the past, it was not this way at all.
In the 19th century, White House rulers had lots of sons. President Lincoln had four sons. Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War Union Army commander who later became America’s 18th president, had three sons and a daughter.
You probably know that when you use a credit card to buy something the merchant pays a fee based on a percentage of the item’s cost. This gets passed on to you in higher prices. Ever wander how much higher? This calculator/mashup will tell you. I tried one of my cards (enter the first six digits of the account number which identifies the issuer and type of card) which is from Amazon where I get a $25 certificate for each $2500 I charge. Turns out reward cards like that cost businesses even more. Might want to think about that when buying from a small merchant.
Rewards cards cost businesses more than non-rewards cards because the credit card issuers pass the cost of the rewards onto the businesses by charging them higher Interchange rates. Rewards interchange rates are typically around 0.30% higher than the rate for a regular card. However, many smaller businesses actually get charged more than 0.30% additional for such transactions because it triggers a downgrade, which allows their credit card processor to charge them as much as an additional 1.50%.
It appears people are using credit cards less in this recession. But some are worried the credit card debt poses a bigger problem than the mortgage crisis.
Federal regulators have proposed a $65,000 fine against the owner of a Pennsylvania nuclear plant where security guards routinely napped on the job. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the fine against Chicago-based Exelon Nuclear after completing a special investigation of the Peach Bottom plant in south-central Pennsylvania.
Multiple guards were “deliberately inattentive” on more than one occasion in a plant “ready room” that serves as a break room, and the incidents were not reported to plant supervisors, the NRC said.
The NRC announced its investigation in September 2007, after a videotape recorded earlier in the year of sleeping guards surfaced. The NRC issued a “white” finding — a low-to-moderate threat — for the incident in February based on the agency’s color-coded threat analysis.
Exelon plans to pay the fine, and its monitoring of plant security has improved since the incidents became known. Exelon ended its security contract with Wackenhut Corp. at Peach Bottom after the videotape surfaced and later replaced that company with an in-house security force at all 10 of its nuclear power plants.
At a congressional hearing in February, NRC chairman Dale Klein acknowledged that the agency should have done more to investigate a tip about the sleeping guards. “These were the traffic cops on the beat who were also asleep at the switch.”
“Deliberately unattentive”. Does that include snoring aids?
Marvel Comics executives said it was a natural to put the 44th president in a heroic context.
“When we heard that President-Elect Obama is a collector of Spider-Man comics, we knew that these two historic figures had to meet in our comics’ Marvel Universe,” says Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada. “Historic moments such as this one can be reflected in our comics because the Marvel Universe is set in the real world. A Spider-Man fan moving into the Oval Office is an event that must be commemorated in the pages of ‘Amazing Spider-Man.’”
There’s plenty of presidential history in the comics, such as the time that JFK appeared in the pages of Superman (the issue was written and drawn before Kennedy’s 1963 assassination but actually hit stands after that dark day in Dallas) and Richard Nixon’s 1972 cameos in “The Fantastic Four” and in “The Incredible Hulk.”
When will they have the titanic battle between Sarah (‘it’s everybody else’s fault’) Palin and Caroline (‘uh, you know’) Kennedy for who can give the worst interview?
- Adam Curry invited to meet the Queen.
- Ballmers keynote panned.
- Ballmer promised Win 7 this year. Meanwhile top Windows exec warns that it probably wont ship in 2009.
- Yahoo deal skunked.
- Sun downgraded by Goldman. Stock sinks.
- Lenovo looks as if it is trouble.
- Sony has nifty looking new laptop.
- OLPC falling apart. Layoffs coming.
- New Dish Network device has what appears to be a SlingCatcher built-in.
- Cell chip will be used by Toshiba in their new TVs.
- Cisco story continues. I am dubious.
- Memorex is in the news with a lame CNet story.
- Dell moving Irish operation to Poland.
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them, according to a report by the CPS Office of Inspector General.
That was just one example of questionable CPS actions detailed in the inspector general’s 2008 annual report. Others included high school staffers changing grades to pump up transcripts of student athletes and workers at a restricted-enrollment grade school falsifying addresses to get relatives admitted.
In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators split the order among 21 vocational schools to avoid competitive bidding required for purchases over $10,000. As a result CPS paid about $12,000 too much, according to Inspector General James Sullivan. “We were able to find the same machines cheaper online,” he said.
“We also look at it as a waste of money because the schools didn’t even know they were getting the equipment, schools didn’t know how to use the machines and weren’t prepared to implement them into the curriculum,” Sullivan said.
Does that include baristas? If so, then it’s a good deal.
UFO enthusiasts are claiming damage to a Lincolnshire wind farm turbine was caused by a mystery aircraft.
The turbine at Conisholme lost one 66ft (20m) blade and another was badly damaged in the early hours of Sunday.
County councillor for the area Robert Palmer said he had seen a “round, white light that seemed to be hovering”. Ecotricity, which owns the site, said while investigations continued they were not ruling anything out – but the extent of damage was “unique”…
Mr Palmer said: “I actually saw a white light – a round, white light that seemed to be hovering…
The Ministry of Defence said it was not looking into the incident.
Ecotricity said it would have taken an impact with something at least as heavy as a cow to break off the blade.
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