"The president believes that every life is precious and grieves for each one that is lost," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "He will ensure their sacrifice was not made in vain."
Much of the left, in both Europe and the United States, is so convinced that the Iraq invasion was no more than an American grab for oil and military bases, it seems to have forgotten the myriad crimes of Saddam Hussein.
"The squirrels obviously figured out a cue," Dr. Buton said.
On a happier note, the United States marks the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway System -- an engineering marvel consisting of 47,000 miles of high-speed roads connecting 157,000 Waffle Houses. A formal ceremony is planned, but has to be canceled when Dad refuses to stop.
(August 2006, Brazil) August brings us a winner from Brazil, who tried to disassemble a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) by driving back and forth over it with a car. This technique was ineffective, so he escalated to pounding the RPG with a sledgehammer.
"It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney, speaking in the Capitol Rotunda where Ford's body rested in a flag-draped casket. "Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon."
...Ellison [the Muslim representative-elect from Minnesota who raised a ruckus in certain quarters by saying he intended to take his oath on the Qur'an] would not be the first member of Congress to forgo a Bible at the swearing-in ceremony. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) took her oath in 2005 on a Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, which she borrowed from Representative Gary Ackerman (D., N.Y.) after learning a few hours earlier that the speaker of the House didn't have any Jewish holy books. . .
House members are sworn in together on the House floor in a ceremony without any book, holy or otherwise. But in an unofficial ceremony, individual members reenact an oath-taking so that it can be photographed - a tradition dating from the beginning of the wide use of photography.
"multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilized for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies."
Getting Saddam was going to be Bush's jackpot....He used all the political capital he'd acquired from 9/11. Plus he gave up on Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Afghanistan. He told lies about why we went to war. He violated the basics of international law. He alienated our allies. If he won, all that would be forgotten and forgiven. Worth the price. Proof of his daring manliness. Success erases more sins than being born again ever will. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
But he lost.
Can he get up and walk away from the table?
No.
He will double down, says Beinhart: the war will go on. And I think Beinhart's right. In fact I think it's been apparent for quite some time.
Even if the war remains a quagmire, death and destruction with no end in sight, Bush - personally - is better off. American service men and women, Americans who are paying the bills, Iraqis, and the rest of the world, may not be. But he's better off. Because that will force someone else to pull the plug. Bush will then maintain that had we just stuck to it, it would have succeeded eventually. He will then hire an army of payable pundits and whorish historians to churn out books and papers to say so. That's what the half billion dollar presidential library is for.
And, of course the Pardon, "healing our national nightmare" or whatever the line is now. You remember. Like Gerry Ford did.
Good old Gerry Ford.It is truly vile to listen to George Bush anoint himself the Arbiter of Due Process and Human Rights by praising the Iraqis for giving a "fair trial" to Saddam when we are currently holding 14,000 individuals (at least) around the world in our custody -- many of whom we have been holding for years and in the most inhumane conditions imaginable -- who have been desperately, and unsuccessfully, seeking some forum, any forum, in which to prove their innocence. This lawlessly imprisoned group includes journalists, political activists, and entirely innocent people.
DARTMOOR, United Kingdom--After years of being dismissed as effete, the magical creatures known as pixies have begun a campaign to transform their image.
"Pixies aren't pansies," said pixie spokesperson Jack Thistle, the bells on the ends of his shoes tinkling in anger.
Instead of souring churnfuls of milk or luring travelers astray with dancing lights, the so-called 'New Pixie' threatens to remove fizz from beer and disrupt football broadcasts....
Hopefully, it won't come to that. The tiny creatures have already made some progress with their new image, often finding employment as bouncers at nightclubs.
The reign of Saddam is over and his "golden" era is already history.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Spilt animal parts and a Tomahawk missile that tumbled out of a lorry caused some of the worst traffic nightmares of 2006, according to a report on roadway incidents.
He was passionate about cigars, and Fidel Castro kept him stocked with Cuba's finest tobacco.
LOVELAND, Colo. - As if Colorado residents don't have enough snow to dig out from, one resident is offering more for a price on eBay. Starting bids were holding steady Friday at 99 cents for snow from "Blizzard I and Blizzard II" being offered by Mary Walker. She and husband, Jim, got the idea for selling snow after shoveling mounds from two storms a week apart that together dumped more than 4 feet along the Front Range.
MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Wisconsin's revenue agency said Friday that it sent as many as 170,000 forms to taxpayers with mailing labels mistakenly printed with their Social Security numbers.
The state Department of Revenue was scrambling to alert taxpayers to be on the lookout for the mailings.
"We want to prevent any chance identity theft might occur," department spokeswoman Meredith Helgerson said.
Roper: "So now you'd give the Devil the benefit of law!"
[Sir Thomas] More: "Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get to the Devil?"
Roper: "I'd cut down every law in England to do that!"
More: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you -- where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat. This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of the law, for my own safety's sake."
"I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport."
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
La Scala opera house has canceled a production of Bernstein's "Candide'' that includes a scene with actors dancing in underwear while wearing masks of world leaders including President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
WASHINGTON — With President Bush leaning toward sending more soldiers to pacify Iraq, his defense secretary is privately opposing the buildup.
But the President wants to make sure that he's taking the appropriate amount of time and giving the appropriate consideration of all the options before making an announcement.
The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666.
President Bush came out on top in this year's AP-AOL News poll, winning as "hero" and "villain" for 2006. But while Bush won "villain of the year" by a "landslide," in earning the "hero" honor, the president triumphed over the U.S. troops fighting the war in Iraq by a much smaller margin.
For the past six years, Congress has failed in its duty to provide much needed oversight, shining no sunshine into the fraudulant and wasteful cronyism and doled out greedy no-bid handovers.
And at every turn, IG offices in every governmental agency have been stonewalled and stymied in their investigations. Who could forget the refusal to give clearances to DoJ attorneys investigating improper practices within their own Department for the President's own illegal domestic spying program? Yeah, that one was a classic. And, unfortunately, not a unique example with the current bunch.
And it's worth way, way more than just a pullquote. Go read.
As longtime Corner readers know, I'm far more sympathetic to intervening on a case by case basis than I am to the religious/holistic/Marxist cases for throwing a wet-blanket on global capitalism in the name of curbing greenhouse gas emissions. This is not to say reasonable anti-pollution regulations aren't a good idea, etc etc, blah blah blah.
“The government has taken over Mogadishu,” a transitional government leader, Jama Fuuruh, told Reuters by telephone from Mogadishu’s port.
“No one is really in command,” said one adviser to Western diplomats who has close contacts with both the Islamists and the transitional government. “Chaos is in command.”
Baghdad is the problem and while we debate what to do in Baghdad, the Shiites are changing the facts on the ground in Baghdad through incremental—not at all stealthy—rather rapid ethnic cleansing. So we may get a monochrome Baghdad out of this which would be ahhh, sad, but perhaps tranquilizing.
(Which reminds me: why aren't liberals demanding that Silvestre Reyes step down from his new chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee? Imagine how we'd all be howling if a Republican chairman couldn't say whether Al Qaeda was "predominately" Sunni or Shia.)
Really, there is absolutely no metaphor to see here, move along.
Tuesday, a day after an Ethiopian jet strafed the airport in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, the State Department issued internal guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion in public statements.
"Should the press focus on the role of Ethiopia inside Somalia," read a copy of the guidelines given to The New York Times by a U.S. official here, "emphasize that this is a distraction from the issue of dialogue between the TFIs and Islamic courts."
TFI is an abbreviation for the weak transitional government in Somalia.
"The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia," the guidance said.
Ethiopia has long been a strong ally of Washington in the Horn of Africa. The American military has for years trained Ethiopian troops at bases in the eastern region. The training is part of a Pentagon effort to build the Ethiopian military into a bulwark against regional terrorist networks.
A pilot watched in horror as his plane took off without him.
The airman, 70, saw it soar into the sky and do a loop before crashing, reports the Mirror.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A bill that would automatically return voting rights to felons after they complete their sentences has been introduced by a Florida legislator who is still in office even though he is a convicted felon.,,,
Siplin, a two-term Democrat from Orlando, was convicted in August on felony grand theft charges for having employees work on his 2004 re-election campaign on state time. He was sentenced last month to three years' probation and 300 hours of community service, but that has been postponed pending his appeal.
Florida is one of just three states _ all in the South _ that don't automatically restore voting rights after completion of a sentence, said [FLA] Senate Minority Leader Steven Geller.
Dec. 26 (Bloomberg) -- For growing numbers of international business travelers, visa and customs regulations are making trips to the U.S. a thing of the past.
Companies say U.S. rules have become so onerous in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that it's often simpler to meet customers, business partners and employees elsewhere. Exxon Mobil Corp. has resorted to customer meetings in a London branch office; Ingersoll-Rand Co. says it took one of its Indian engineers three 18-hour trips to get his U.S. visa.
In July of 2003, BearingPoint was awarded a contract by USAID worth $79.5 million to facilitate Iraq's economic recovery with a two-year option worth a total of $240,162,688. Responsibilities in this contract include:
1. Creating Iraq's budget
2. Writing business law
3. Setting up tax collection
4. Laying out trade and customs rules
5. Privatize state-owned enterprises by auctioning them off or issuing Iraqis shares in the enterprises.
6. Reopen banks and jump-start the private sector by making small loans of $100 to $10,000.
7. Wean Iraqis from the U.N. oil-for-food program, the main source of food for 60% of the population.
8. Issue a new currency and set exchange rates.
BearingPoint was formerly KMPG Consulting Inc., the consulting division of the huge accounting firm KPMG LLP that was brought down in the Enron/Arthur Anderson scandal of 2002. On February, 8, 2001, the consulting branch was officially seperated from its parent due to a public offering on the company. When the Enron scandal broke, they changed their name to BearingPoint and subsquently acquired the operations left behind by the deteriorating Arthur Anderson.
a joyous little collection of holiday cards from flacks far and wide.
The idea of signing up residents who are seeking U.S. citizenship is gaining traction as a way to address a critical need for the Pentagon, while fully absorbing some of the roughly one million immigrants that enter the United States legally each year.
The proposal to induct more noncitizens, which is still largely on the drawing board, has to clear a number of hurdles. So far, the Pentagon has been quiet about specifics, like who would be eligible to join, where the recruiting stations would be, and what the minimum standards might involve, like English proficiency.
A recent change in U.S. law, however, gave the Pentagon authority to bring immigrants to the United States if it determines it is vital to national security. So far, the Pentagon has not taken advantage of it, but the calls are growing to use this new authority.
Indeed, some top military thinkers believe the United States should go as far as targeting foreigners in their native countries.
THE White House is expected to announce a reconstruction package for Iraq as part of a plan for a “surge” of up to 30,000 troops into Baghdad when President George W Bush unveils America’s new strategy next month.
Bush is being urged to give up to $10 billion (£5.1 billion) to Iraq as part of a “New Deal” that would create work for unemployed Iraqis, following the model of President Franklin D Roosevelt during the 1930s depression.
DENVER (AP) - Even with a few added flights, planes leaving Denver's beleaguered airport Christmas Eve teemed with passengers, many of whom had been stranded when a two-day blizzard shut down the runways last week.
The airport's two biggest airlines, United and Frontier, said they finally flew full schedules of a combined 1,200 flights Saturday, plus 12 extra by United. They expected a similar schedule Sunday as travelers around the country whose itineraries were wrecked by the storm's ripple effect raced to get home.
NEW YORK (AP) - There's nobody nice on this Christmas list: snowman stabbers, Grinch snatchers, wreath-robbing weasels. 'Tis the season for strange crimes by even stranger people, with police blotters expanding faster than a 6-year-old's wish list of gifts.
"Why me?" asked Frosty's owner, Matt Williquette. "And why Frosty?"
"Everybody wants to be cool and groovy, and there is this nagging feeling that nobody was more cool and groovy than Andy," Doonan offers. "He invented it. Every few years a new generation discovers him and then all the old geezers like me get reminded of how great he was … and funny." One of Doonan's favorite Warholisms? "Employees make the best dates: You don't have to pick them up and they are always tax deductible."
In a University of Minnesota survey designed to determine who is naughty and who is nice, the naughty outnumbered the nice by a whopping 3-to-1 margin, the university revealed today....
Davis Logsdon, who supervised the survey, said that the rise of the naughty, along with the steady decline of the nice, can be attributed to two major factors. “The Internet has spread naughtiness at a rate that few of us could have anticipated,” Mr. Logdson said. “Also, some of the credit has to go to the Fox network.”
LONDON (AP) - The Queen's traditional Christmas speech will be available as a podcast for the first time this year, officials at Buckingham Palace announced Friday.
A download can be ordered free in advance on the British monarchy's website www.royal.gov.uk, officials said. Internet users can also view the speech online and a text version will be posted on the royal website.
"It's the whole peace-on-earth and goodwill-toward-man thing. It lifts us up when people can say 'Merry Christmas' without worrying about whether it's politically correct," said Jennifer Giroux, a Cincinnati entrepreneur. She began marketing rubber bracelets urging "Just Say 'Merry Christmas' " last December; this season, she has sold more than 50,000, at $2 apiece.
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, said he was delighted with the revenue from "War on Christmas" merchandise, which supplemented the ministry's $13 million annual budget. All 500,000 buttons and 125,000 magnets were sold out by early December. "It was very successful for us," Wildmon said.
In fact, the fund-raising went so well that the religious right plans to branch out. Next up: The war on Easter.
Scouts for the American Family Association, which is based in Tupelo, Miss., will keep a keen eye out for stores that promote "spring baskets" or "spring bonnets" instead of celebrating Christ's resurrection. The group already has laid in a stash of Easter buttons, bearing three gold crosses and the words "He Lives."
Laying the foundation of a presidential candidacy, Governor Mitt Romney has spent all or part of 212 days outside Massachusetts so far in 2006, an average of more than four days on the road each week, a Globe review of his public schedules shows.
CNet News.com reported this week that Karim Yergaliyev, 19, one of the top 30 “diggers,” whose stories get the most diggs from fellow users, agreed to a barter transaction from a marketer, Nathan Schorr, the business development manager for JetNumbers. In exchange for free service, Mr. Yergaliyev acknowledged, he planted an article about JetNumbers, which provides “virtual” telephone numbers (news.com).
“I never do it,” Mr. Yergaliyev told News.com, “but the week JetNumbers asked me, I met this girl and I was really happy with life. I wanted to help anybody.”
LONDON (AFP) - A feisty great-grandmother held four builders hostage after they told her improvement work on her home would not be finished by Christmas, several British newspapers reported.
Josie Medlock snapped when she was told the modernisation of her municipal council-owned home would not be completed until the new year, scuppering her plans to have 14 family members round for a slap-up Christmas Day meal....
"They have had me up nearly every day at 6:00 am for them to start at 8:00 am and then they didn't turn up. I just couldn't take it any more. I was beside myself with worry that the house would look like a tip for Christmas."
Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. "I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital," she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could "certainly" have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.
...the average age of the incoming Democratic House committee leaders is 67, six years older than the Republicans they are replacing. The trend is the same, albeit less pronounced, in the Senate, where the average age of Democratic chairmen will be about 68.5, a year older than the Republican leaders who are losing their majority status.
(12-23) 04:00 PST Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to ship thousands of California inmates to prisons in other states to reduce overcrowding is faltering because few prisoners -- some intimidated by powerful gangs -- have volunteered to move.
To help drum up interest, the administration is showing a 20-minute video in prisons across the state featuring interviews with a handful of inmates who have moved to a Tennessee lockup. The video includes prisoners praising their new home for amenities such as cable television and better hot meals, as well as access to educational classes that are largely unavailable in California prisons.
"We have ESPN,'' says one inmate with a tattoo of barbed wire running around his neck as he looks into the camera.
A virtually blind New Zealand man has been banned from driving after taking the wheel from a drink driver.
But Officer, we did have a designated driver. But he was blind.
"People are warming to the realization that some sort of surge is necessary," said another military official.And he ain't talkin extra batteries, although that would be a good idea too! [Note: Get extra batteries.]
BEIJING, Dec 21 (Reuters Life!) - Police in central China have scotched a wine maker's plans for a mass Christmas Eve "nude run" which the company said was a public interest event to discourage the use of "excessive packaging" in the industry....
"The goal of this streaking event is to raise consumer awareness and declare war on the excessive packaging of 'baijiu' through the language of the body," the report quoted a manager surnamed Ma as saying.
"Baijiu" is a type of grain-based spirit popular in China, and often given as an elaborately packaged gift in the lead-up to Chinese New Year....
"Public commercial events ... must meet moral standards," CCTV quoted a police official as saying. "Such mass streakings do not."
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Friday cut in half a $5 billion jury award for punitive damages against Exxon Mobil Corp. in the 1989 Valdez oil spill that smeared black goo across roughly 1,500 miles of Alaskan coastline.
The company, whose $36.1 billion in earnings last year were the highest ever by any U.S. corporation, said it has spent more than $3 billion to settle federal and state lawsuits and to clean the Prince William Sound area. The company earned about $5 billion when the spill occurred.
In October, Exxon Mobil reported earnings of $10.49 billion in the third quarter, the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.
Exxon did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
NAJAF, Iraq, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Iraqi soldiers bit the heads off frogs and ate the heart of a rabbit as signs of courage on Wednesday at a ceremony to transfer Najaf province, home to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines, from U.S. to Iraqi control.
One soldier, Corporal Ali Abdul Hasan, said the army needed everything from helicopters to guns. "Some vehicles arrived with parts missing and we have old weapons. They didn't even give us pistols," he said.
For those stranded in Denver and flying standby because they were unable to rebook a flight, finding a spot on crowded planes filled with holiday travelers could prove impossible this weekend.
Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said the airline has 65,000 bumped passengers to move systemwide and the airline is already 90 percent booked for the holidays.
"Do the math," he said.
The "readiness exercise" would test the system that randomly chooses draftees by birth date and its network of appeal boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay reporting for duty, Campbell said.
You're in the army now
No use to raise a row;
Shovel and chuck
The goo and the muck,
You're in the army now
Today the New York Times runs a very unusual op-ed: Censored. An essay by former CIA official Flynt Leverett has been thoroughly redacted by the White House. The censored essay — titled "Redacted Version of Original Op-Ed" in case you missed the chunks of blacked-out text throughout — is what remains of an essay criticizing Bush's policies toward Iran. According to the Times, it elected to run the redacted version after the White House claimed that portions were classified (this, please note, is after the CIA, which has cleared over 20 other pieces by Leverett, cleared the entire piece). Wednesday, Rep. Louise Slaughter sent a letter to Bush asking whether the redactions were politically motivated.
"There simply is not enough digital marketing talent in the world," Kenny said.
LONDON (Reuters) - Father Christmas was forced to swap his traditional red and white hat for protective headgear after children pelted him with mince pies in Scotland....
He said a gang of local "neds," or yobs, threw the pies before running off. Last year, the centre's Father Christmas was set upon by youths calling a him a "fraud and a fake."
At last, George W is getting the hang of foreign policy. Yes, he badly botched Afghanistan and has made a bloody mess of Iraq – but, by gollies, in North Korea, it looks like he's finally at the top of his game....
And, now, W is stepping boldly into the historical spotlight with an equally-novel tactic to bring Kim Jong to his knees: toy deprivation.
A group of Polish MPs have called for Jesus to be named King of Poland.
The 46 MPs from the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, the coalition League of Polish Families (LPR) party and the Polish Peasants Party (PSL) signed a petition backing the move this week.
"MPs should pray and suffer, so that they will be remembered fondly."
On the December 18 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, guest host Karen Hanretty asked Fox News political analyst Dick Morris if he was "proposing a ticket of [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY], [Sen.] Barack Obama [D-IL]," for the Democratic presidential nomination, to which Morris replied: "I'm not proposing it. I'm leaving the country if this happens." Morris added, "I do not want Hillary Clinton controlling the FBI and the IRS and the CIA and the DEA."
The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.
Of course, once a technosocial force like the blog is loosed on the world, it does not go away because some find it undesirable. So grieving over the lost establishment is pointless, and kind of sad. But democracy does not work well, so to speak, without checks and balances. And in acceding so easily to the imperatives of the Internet, we've allowed decay to pass for progress.
A Table of Condiments That Periodically Go Bad.
This war on terror is the calling of a new generation; it is the calling of our generation. Success is essential to securing a future of peace for our children and grandchildren. And securing this peace for the future is going to require a sustained commitment from the American people and our military.
I encourage you all to go shopping more.
I wish you all a happy holiday.
"There are angles at which a girl's arm can look haunting."
"When the film comes to me, I realize I don't want to see hip bones and ribs in the magazine."
There is a better way to treat people, and there's a better way to deal with the issue of finding workers Americans are not doing, to fill on a temporary basis. And, therefore, there [sic] need -- and that in itself will take pressure off our border. In other words, if people feel like they can come in on a temporary, legal basis, they're not going to have to sneak in, which in itself does away with -- that in itself does away with this kind of underground industry that has sprung up.
...says the DOOFUS in a WaPo interview published today.
Whether the tree or the splintered limb that crashed into your house belongs to you, your neighbor or the city, experts say you're still responsible for the damage -- unless the other person knew something was wrong and didn't do anything about it....
Beware of people who knock at your door offering to help you.
GLENVIEW, Ill. - Just in time for Christmas, they’re selling reindeer hot dogs in suburban Chicago.
With grilled onions and mustard, it will cost you eight dollars at Fred Markoff’s hot dog stand in Glenview.
Romney's playing an infuriating little game whereby opposition to same-sex marriage can't possibly be considered discriminatory because marriage isn't meant to be for anyone aside from one man and one woman in the first place so not extending it to gays isn't discriminatory, by gum, it's just the way it has to be by definition, that's all. (And hence granting it would be granting "special rights.") Such reasoning, of course, is manifest bullshit, the same kind of rubbish spewed by defenders of all manner of discrimination, right back to slavery, because freedom was only meant for certain people.
"I've always been a believer in second chances," Trump, who owns the Miss Universe Organization with NBC, said with Conner at his side.
"I think Tara is going to be the great comeback kid," Trump said.
A music review on Nov. 29 about “La Passion de Simone,” at the Jugendstiltheater in Vienna, misspelled the surname of the subject of the work at one point. She was Simone Weil, not Weill.
The US Army is considering measures to force striking workers back to their jobs at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber plant in Kansas in the face of a looming shortage of tyres for Humvee trucks and other military equipment used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A strike involving 17,000 members of the United Steelworkers union has crippled 16 Goodyear plants in the US and Canada since October 5.
He doesn't want us wondering why the global economy has been integrated with complex intellectual, patent and copyright protections, but no similar protections for wages, human rights, or environmental concerns. Because, you see, if we asked those questions, his entire premise would collapse like a house of cards.
Gingrich cited last month's ejection of six Muslim scholars from a plane in Minneapolis for suspicious behavior, which included reports they prayed before the flight and had sat in the same seats as the Sept. 11 hijackers.
"Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists," Gingrich said.
Staff at a riding school [in Ireland] were forced to postpone festivities after Gus the camel, who was to star in the Christmas show, chomped his way through 200 mince pies and several cans of Guinness stout beer intended for their party.
Children's presenter Christopher Lillicrap, who is directing Sleeping Beauty at Worthing's Connaught Theatre, said: "How daft can you get?
The iPhone is here! Oh wait, not the one you were thinking of.
Cisco's Linksys division rolled out a new line of VoIP devices, including handsets, dubbed the iPhone.
Depending on the school or subject, concepts rather than a single subject are assessed on a three- or four-point numerical system. A higher score usually is equivalent to higher performance. A one means the student is not proficient or is not meeting standards; a two is equivalent to progressing toward the standard; a three means the student has met the standard. If and when a school uses a four, it demonstrates a student exceeds the standard....
"I hope that things can remain somewhat static for a while, because there's been terrific change — every few years things shift," said Barker of Clarendon. "If the state wants to set learning standards, perhaps they want to set up a report card for us."
A previous version of this story incorrectly said researchers had found that trans fats lower the amount of LDL, or "good" blood cholesterol, and increase HDL, or "bad" cholesterol. LDL is "bad" cholesterol and HDL is the "good" cholesterol.
Officials with Seattle City Light last evening said 18,000 customers were still in the dark but that their goal was to get that number down to 18,000 or fewer by midnight.
Officials with Seattle City Light last evening said 18,000 customers were still in the dark but that their goal was to get that number down to 18,000 or fewer by midnight.
"I am not persuaded that another surge of troops into Baghdad for the purposes of suppressing this communitarian violence, this civil war, will work."
Congestion was so bad on streets leading to Bellevue Square, and in the Overlake area, that it was not uncommon to see people pounding their fists on steering wheels, yelling for someone else to go, honking -- or flipping off another driver who went out of turn.
"This gives her a way to talk to me without having to talk to me...."
“The days of sitting behind the focus-group wall are going the way of the buggy whip,” said Mike Nazzaro, BuzzMetrics’ president and chief operating officer. “We are fundamentally changing the way marketing and market research will be done in the future. We’re providing guidance to marketing decisions that was never possible.”
[As the computer maker Dell discovered....] The company’s level of service and quality was denounced by bloggers this year, and the complaints found broad exposure when one popular media site added its critical voice.
At the same time, positive word of mouth magnified by the Internet can be a boon, as Toyota discovered with its hybrid Prius sedan, which has been praised by admirers on sites created just for that purpose.
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A Southern California fence-building company and two executives pleaded guilty Thursday to knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and agreed to pay a combined penalty of $5 million. The executives could also go to prison.
"People slip through the cracks and that's what happens."
After two years in which the military sought to manage terrorism suspects at Guantánamo with incentives for good behavior, steady improvements in their living conditions and even dialogue with prison leaders, the authorities here have clamped down decisively in recent months.
Security procedures have been tightened. Group activities have been scaled back. With the retrofitting of Camp 6 and the near-emptying of another showcase camp for compliant prisoners, military officials said about three-fourths of the detainees would eventually be held in maximum-security cells. That is a stark departure from earlier plans to hold a similar number in medium-security units.
Unfortunately, my favorite horrid Christmas album,
Steve and Edie’s Christmas in Las Vegas,
is a myth, a threat I thought up to try to clear out a party that was going on too long...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, who study everything from caribou mating to global warming, subjecting them to controls on research that might go against official policy.
The gift may be especially appropriate for bosses and in-laws, Bobby C. said.
"You've been naughty so here's the scoop, all you get is reindeer poop."
"We have these special gloves that we wear and we scoop out 4 ounces of the reindeer poop in each bag," quipped Robert "Bobby C." Campbell [a local DJ].
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's army has "opened its doors" to all former members of Saddam Hussein's army, the prime minister said Saturday, as the Shiite-dominated government reached out to Sunni Arabs for help in curbing the rampant violence in the country....
His comments came as the Iraqi government convened a national reconciliation conference aimed at rallying ethnic, religious and political groups around a common strategy for handling Iraq's problems.
"James Dobson should start to wonder," the activist stated in a release, "if there is something inherently wrong with his stance on gay issues if the only way he can support his positions is outright lying."
The Miss Universe Organisation said yesterday that it was evaluating Miss Conner’s “behavioural and personal issues” after media reports that she had been drinking her way around a string of trendy New York bars and bedhopping her way across the city.
