Free Republic

Joe Lieberman would be a personal choice of mine in that I would believe it could bring in enough votes to take the win for McCain, but obviously while I admire him so very much there are a number of political issues I disagree with – but there are also many that I agree with Joe on. The problem is I’m dreaming this one, because I don’t think the conservatives would be very happy with this choice. Still, I have him as a personal favorite, but it isn’t going to happen. I liked Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska), but the problem...

The daughter of a Second World War RAF pilot who reprimanded a teenager who she accused of vandalising a war memorial has been convicted of assault (edit)But Mrs Lake was arrested after giving a boy, whom she believed to be the ringleader, a talking-to and a 'cuff round the ear'.She tackled him after she saw at least one youth riding a BMX bike through freshly-laid flower beds.Magistrates heard that when she grabbed his shirt collar, he said: 'That's assault'. (edit) 'I lost my temper in frustration after two years of trying to get something done and immediately the police...

Burglars should no longer be sentenced to jail, official advisers have said. Unpaid work or a curfew would normally be a better way of punishing break-ins and thefts, said a panel that issues guidelines to judges. The report - part of a consultation document on criminal sentencing - is likely to heighten concerns that Britain's courts are not punishing offenders harshly enough to deter others. It also says victims of crime could be allowed a say in the way criminals are punished - but only if they call for leniency rather than harsh sentencing. For the first time, magistrates and...

A pensioner who used a piece of wood to chase away a gang of teenagers who had been throwing stones at his home is facing a jail term after being arrested and charged with possessing an offensive weapon. Sydney Davis, 65, a father-of-two, dialled 999 when his home in the Pinehurst area of Swindon, Wilts, came under attack. But when police failed to turn up over the next two hours he decided to take action himself. He grabbed a section of wood from a broken-up sofa lying in his front garden and chased the youths down the street - just...

Quote:This poster design inspires you to learn about design history. There are a lot of interesting artists and art movements. The past is a rich design resource that can have a positive influence on your designs.It is a poster design inspired by an art movement called Russian Constructivism. I cut up some images and paste them together to create a stylized revolutionary design and then tied it all together by overlaying some texture to give it a vintage feel.

Planning an eco-friendly wedding just underlines how committed Jamie Hanson and Mark Hamlyn are to living an environmentally respectful life. "Sometimes we choose things that are not absolutely perfect, but we do our absolute best," says Hamlyn. An operations manager at Suncor in Fort McMurray with a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Alberta, Hamlyn, 37, met Hanson while on the job. "He wandered into my office to thank the girl I shared an office with for recommending someone to hire and we got to talking," remembers Hanson. Hanson, 32, works for TransAlta Utilities, Suncor's partner, as manager...

An Iranian general said Tuesday that any aggressor to Iran will be seen off doomed-fate so that it would be a historical lesson, semi-official Fars news agency reported. "The recent threats of the Zionist regime's (Israeli) officials against Iran are the outcome of their recurrent defeats," Iranian Army Forces General Bureau Chief Major General Seied Hassan Firoozabadi said. He added that the "enemies now know that Iranians are, like their armed forces, a unified entity due to their faith and the lessons that they have taken from their supreme leader." "Iranian nation will demolish any Satan who intends to attack...

WASHINGTON - Wholesale prices bolted ahead in May at the fastest pace in six months as energy and food costs marched higher. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its Producer Price Index, which measures the costs of goods before they reach store shelves, shot up 1.4 percent in May. That was up from a modest 0.2 percent rise in April and marked the biggest increase since November. However, stripping out energy and food prices, which can swing widely from month to month, the "core" rate of inflation rose 0.2 percent in May, an improvement from the prior month's 0.4 percent...

The president of the low-lying Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati said Thursday his country may already be doomed because of climate change. President Anote Tong said communities had already been resettled and crops destroyed by seawater in some parts of the country, made up of 33 coral atolls straddling the equator. Although scientists are still debating the extent of rising sea levels and their cause, Tong told a press conference marking World Environment Day that changes were obvious in his country of 92,000 people. "I am not a scientist but what I know is that things are happening we did...

Probably almost everyone is familiar with the hyperinflationary episode that engulfed Germany after the First World War. That nation’s economy was crippled by monetary problems that resulted in dreadful personal hardships, even though up to that time Germany had achieved one of the highest living standards in the world. The newly formed German government, named for the city where their constitution was drafted after the Kaiser’s abdication in 1918, kept pumping up the money supply. The process started relatively slowly, but quickly the pace of money creation accelerated. The Weimar government was paying its bills on credit – just like...

Microsoft on Thursday revealed its plans for an advertising network built into its Zune media players, offering advertisers a direct line to consumers through the device. Yahoo writes that the company demonstrated the concept using a phony Doritos mockup. In the example, a user could befriend a musician through the Zune social page on a Doritos’ sponsored concert to view news and updates on the artist’s profile. Once added to the friends list, users could also email the profile to friends, as well as downloading selected tracks from the website for playback on the Zune. When the recipient receives the...

GameStop to stop selling Zunes Microsoft is in for more bad news regarding its Zune personal music players, as GameStop on Thursday announced it decided to stop selling the flash-memory digital music player in its stores. The video-game retailer said lack of consumer demand and the device's ill fit with its existing offerings prompted the decision, which was made about a month ago. The retail chain is made up of hundreds of stores across the US, and will not order new stock, clearing out existing inventory exclusively on its web store.

Amazon doomed by too much clean air Last Updated: 12:01am BST 07/05/2008 The lungs of the planet - the Amazon - could be wiped out within half a century as a result of too much clean air, writes Roger Highfield. The vast rainforest, so crucial to the Earth's climate, is coming under threat from attempts to curb the pollution that causes acid rain, warn UK and Brazilian climate scientists. The Amazon rainforest is threatened by drought Their new study in Nature reports a link between reducing sulphur dioxide emissions from burning coal and increasing sea surface temperatures in the tropical...

By Andrea Thompson updated 12:20 p.m. MT, Tues., March. 25, 2008 A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth's southernmost continent. Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events. Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

A fond farewell to 209 once-common things that are either obsolete or well on the way In his 1970 book, Future Shock, futurist Alvin Toffler warned that the last few decades of the 20th century would bring a widespread physical and psychological overload. "When we lived in an agrarian world as peasants, life was set by the seasons, and things were slow. Terribly slow," says Toffler. "You still had the same plot of land your whole life. Your son's life wasn't going to be that different than your father's." A drastically accelerating world, he predicted, was more than humans would...

Hope dims that Earth will survive Sun's death19:09 22 February 2008 NewScientist.com news service Jason Palmer The future looks bright for the Earth – but not in the way we’d hoped. The slim chance our planet will survive when the Sun begins its death throes has been ruled out. In a few billion years, the Sun will fuse the last of its hydrogen into helium, turn into a red giant and expand to 250 times its current size. At first, the Sun’s loss of mass will loosen its gravitational pull on Earth, which will allow the planet to migrate to...

Citigroup has barred investors in one of its hedge funds from withdrawing their money, and a new leveraged fund lost 52 percent in its first three months, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Citigroup Headquarters The largest U.S. bank suspended redemptions in CSO Partners, a fund specializing in corporate debt, after investors tried to pull more than 30 percent of its roughly $500 million of assets, the newspaper said. Citigroup injected $100 million to stabilize the fund, which lost 10.9 percent last year, the newspaper said. The fund's manager, John Pickett, left following a dispute with Citigroup executives and complaints...

I wonder if the doomsday clock will go nuclear now that it's McCain/Hillary in 2008. That gives either one of them 4 years to really mess up in the final war which is upon us. Perhaps 2012 is "more real" than we think.

If you think turning 40 is bad, just wait until you turn 44. Researchers say that’s the age when people feel most depressed. Using data on two million people from 80 countries, researchers found an extraordinarily consistent pattern in depression and happiness levels that leaves us most miserable in middle age. Using a sample of one million people from the U.K., researchers discovered that for both men and women the probability of depression peaks around 44 years of age. The only country which recorded a significant gender difference was in the U.S., where unhappiness reached a peak at around 40...

Seven years ago, there was mass preparation for Y2K, alleged by some to be the end of the world. Believers scurried to save water and canned foods just in case the new millennium brought the immense devastation theories speculated. Again, we are faced with the timeless question of whether our world will endor not. The highly intelligent Ancient Mayan civilization developed an intricate calendar which anticipated the end of their Great Cycle of the Long Count-better known as the apocalypse-on Dec. 21, 2012.

The last Santa suit manufacturer in the country was Halco, a Belle Vernon-based company that specialized in Santa's suits, dresses for Mrs. Claus and outfits for elves. This year the last locally produced Santa suit was finished in May and the workers were laid off. Santa suits were one of the last sectors of the apparel industry to be left in the United States. Shoes that had been made in New England were made overseas decades ago, though there are a handful of manufacturers still left in the States. Textiles, which early in the last century were made in both...

A REPORT by Australian scientists has warned that the world is warming faster than predicted by the United Nations' top climate change body.

<p>The last days on Earth of Abu Osama al-Tunisi apparently were filled with anxiety: “We are desperate for your help,� he said in a letter to al Qaeda chieftains.</p>

Fortune Magazine) -- Here I go. I am about to walk into one of the biggest sucker's games in the whole world of economics: declaring that the U.S. consumer is tapped out, so desperately in hock and troubled about the future that he finally just can't spend like it's 1999 anymore. And to be clear, that is what I'm declaring. Unless I can talk myself out of it by the end of the column. I must be nuts. One of the most reliable ways to look like a business dope over the past several years has been to announce that...

Source: SETI Institute Date: October 15, 2007 Long-lost, Dangerous Asteroid Is Found Again Science Daily — Echoing the re-discovery of America by the Spanish long after an earlier Viking reconnaissance, astronomers have learned that a recently observed asteroid - one that could potentially hit the Earth - was actually first observed nearly a half-century ago. Researchers at the Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA have confirmed work by SETI Institute astronomer Peter Jenniskens that the recently discovered asteroid 2007 RR9 is in fact the long-lost object 6344 P-L. So far, this object has not yet...

Record Exports Help Push Trade Deficit to Lowest Level in 7 Months WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. trade deficit fell to the lowest level in seven months, helped by record-high sales of American products. The deficit with China declined as imports edged down slightly following a string of high-profile recalls. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the deficit declined to $57.6 billion in August, down 2.4 percent from the July imbalance. It was lowest gap between exports and imports since January and a much better showing than had been expected. The improvement reflected a 0.4 percent rise in exports, which...

European, Asian and Canadian companies are taking advantage of the weaker dollar to buy their U.S. counterparts at a record pace, increasing investment in the United States but also raising fears about a potential loss of jobs and autonomy. "We could be looking at the world's largest tag sale if we continue to see declines in the dollar," said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist at DataCore Partners. In the latest large deal aided by a weak dollar, Commerce Bancorp, which is based in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, agreed Tuesday to be acquired by Toronto-Dominion Bank of Canada in a cash-and-shares deal...

IRAN VOWS TO TAKE CHARGE IN IRAQ nothing follows yet

1.) Tragically, horrifyingly, but quite predictably, it’s going to happen. The only question being which American city or cities? In a recent conversation with a former high level intelligence operative of our government, I raised the possibility of terrorists successfully detonating a nuclear weapon within the United States. His response was sobering in its hopelessness. First, he stressed how grateful he was that he did not work in Washington, DC, and that his family lived far enough out to survive the coming nuclear blast. When I pressed him as to why he was so sure that Islamic terrorists – with...

Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday. Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005. To make this kind of prediction, researchers at Britain's Met Office -- which deals with meteorology -- made a computer model that takes into account such...

Could the turmoil in the markets in the past few weeks be the precursor of a full-blown credit crunch that could force the U.S. and global economies into a recession? Some observers think that the markets are exhibiting classic signs of a so-called "Minsky moment," when overleveraged borrowers must finally pay the piper for their euphoria. The result, they say, will be a credit shortage that could bring down even innocent bystanders in their wake. Academics, economists and money managers are all sounding the alarm. Financial markets are counting on the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates to cushion the...

Looking for a perfect example of why California is unlikely ever to have a balanced budget again until an initiative finally forces lawmakers to end their recklessness? Consider the reaction to a reported Republican proposal on education spending. Under the GOP plan, education spending would go up 3.8 percent this fiscal year, from $55.1 billion to $57.2 billion. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders back spending of $57.6 billion. So by any rational definition, what the Republicans are suggesting is a modest attempt to contain spending growth as part of an overall effort to bring spending in line with revenue....

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Dow Jones industrial average swept past 14,000 for the first time Tuesday following a relatively mild inflation report and a wave of generally upbeat earnings reports. The stock market's best-known indicator crossed 14,000 in the first half-hour of trading, rising to 14,002.60 and having taken just 57 trading days to make the trip from 13,000. Stocks have risen fairly steadily since the spring amid a continuum of buyout news and evidence that despite higher fuel prices and the ongoing problems in the housing market and mortgage lending industry, consumers are spending and companies remain optimistic...

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Loss-making Ford Motor Co. is planning to sell Swedish car maker Volvo and German carmaker BMW could be a possible buyer, a Swedish newspaper said on Monday. The Goteborgs Posten daily reported on its website that a source within Ford said BMW has been studying a possible purchase of Volvo. The Financial Times also reported last Friday BMW was in informal talks to buy Volvo. "We cannot comment on speculation, this is a question for our owner," said a spokeswoman for Volvo cars. Ford bought Volvo in 1999 and it is now part of the U.S. company's...

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Hollywood star and long-time environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio has a message for the world: go green now, before it's too late. As DiCaprio tells it in film documentary "The 11th Hour", launched on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, people are living in the last minutes of the final hour before it may be too late to do anything about global warming. "Global warming is a reality. It is happening," DiCaprio told reporters gathered for the movie's debut. Last year "An Inconvenient Truth" explored the same environmental issue by telling of former U.S. Vice President Al...

Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio sent out a message about global warming at the Cannes Film Festival. The heartthrob has made a film, the 11th Hour, warning that human beings face extinction as a result of the environmental crisis. At a press conference in the South of France following the screening, The Blood Diamond actor, 32, attacked US President George Bush, saying: "It's very simple. He's done very little for the environmental movement." The Titanic star's latest film, which he narrates, follows another environmental warming documentary by former US Presidential candidate Al Gore, shown at the Cannes Film Festival last year....

Our planet is just five years away from climate change catastrophe - but can still be saved, according to a new report. Planet is five years from disasterThe World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns governments have until 2012 to "plant the seeds of change" and make positive moves to limit carbon emissions. If they fail to do so, the WWF's Vision For 2050 warns "generations to come will have to live with the compromises and hardships caused by their inability to act". "We have a small window of time in which we can plant the seeds of change, and...

Our planet is just five years away from climate change catastrophe - but can still be saved, according to a new report. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns governments have until 2012 to "plant the seeds of change" and make positive moves to limit carbon emissions.

A sperm donor who helped a lesbian couple conceive two children is liable for child support under a state appeals-court ruling that a legal expert believes might be the first of its kind. A Superior Court panel last week ordered a Dauphin County judge to establish how much Carl L. Frampton Jr. would have to pay to the birth mother of an 8-year-old boy and 7-year-old girl. "I'm unaware of any other state appellate court that has found that a child has, simultaneously, three adults who are financially obligated to the child's support and are also entitled to visitation," said...

UN report says poor will suffer most unless measures taken to cut greenhouse gases BRUSSELS (AP)-- As the world gets hotter, millions of people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods and disease unless drastic action is taken, the bleakest report yet on global warming said yesterday. "Don't be poor in a hot country, don't live in hurricane alley, watch out about being on the coasts or the Arctic, and it's a bad idea to be on high mountains with glaciers melting," Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University scientist and study co-author, said. All regions of the world will change, with the...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street fell Monday after data showed U.S. manufacturing was more sluggish than expected, a further sign that the economy continues to grow at a slower pace. Stocks briefly had opened higher but fell sharply lower after the Institute for Supply Management said its manufacturing index slipped more than economists projected in March. The index moved to a reading of 50.9 last month, compared to an expected reading of 52.0. However, keeping stocks afloat was a number of big acquisitions were announced before the market opened. Among them was private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts &...

As the Business & Media Institute reported last year, press reports of climate change have been going on since the 1800s. Over the weekend, I was sent a list of New York Times articles dating back to 1855 addressing the global warming and cooling that has been happening on this planet for the past 150 years. I have taken the liberty of adding a few pieces that I discovered in the Times’ archives to further illustrate the point. As you review the following, try to keep in mind just how sure global warming alarmists like soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore are that...

Number of Laid-Off Workers Filing Claims for Unemployment Benefits Fall for 3rd Straight Week WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits fell last week for the third consecutive time, signaling that the labor market may be stabilizing after a worrisome jump in layoffs earlier in the year. The Labor Department reported Thursday that the number of applications for jobless benefits totaled 316,000 last week, a decline of 4,000 from the previous week. The third straight drop in claims pushed them down to the lowest level in six weeks and provided evidence that the labor...

Wheat harvested a month early, markets bursting with prematurely ripened produce, animals migrating too soon or not at all -- Europe's warmest winter on record has made nature run amok, experts across the continent have reported. With average temperatures in the three winter months of December through February more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in most European countries, the environment's biological clock has been thrown off kilter, they say. In Italy, emerging from the mildest winter in more than two centuries according to Bologna's Institute for Atmospheric Science and Climate, vegetables not normally seen until later...

For several months, some of the U.S. homebuilder companies acknowledged abnormal supply as well as pricing pressures in the marketplace. More recently, the sub-prime mortgage companies that recklessly financed the bulk of the industry’s business discovered a problem with delinquencies and foreclosures. This is the story that will finally push the stock market from Bull to Bear, and the economy into recession. Traders are nervous, with the upshot being a swing to cash and gold. Why gold? Under the circumstances that exist today in the financial marketplace, any rise in interest rates will certainly pass the tipping point to where...

John Edwards: March 13th Bennett College Rally at Bennett College with Presidential Candidate John Edwards, March 13th 2007. Edwards on Skipping Fox News Debate: 'I saw absolutely no reason to give Fox a special platform especially given their history on how they treat Democrats and Democrat Presidential candidates' Edwards on Global Warming: 'This is an emergency' 'It's a frightening thing' 'It'll make world war look like heaven'

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 8, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - America is in a moral and culture tailspin leading to an escalating 'culture war', according to a majority of US citizens polled in a recent survey. The Culture and Media Institute released a special report March 7, entitled "The National Cultural Values Survey: America: a Nation in Moral and Spiritual Confusion," at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Responses to the survey revealed a country embattled on the issue of individualism versus moral responsibility, with the largest segment of the population swaying in a middle position between traditionalism and radical secularism. While...

Al-Sadr: Baghdad Security Plan Is Doomed Sunday February 25, 2007 6:16 PM By SINAN SALAHEDDIN Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite militia complained Sunday that bombs ``continue to explode'' in Baghdad and that U.S.-led security crackdown is doomed to fail, issuing a statement the same day a suicide attacker struck outside a college campus, killing at least 41 people. Many Shiites believe that bombings have continued because the Shiite-led government bowed to American pressure and persuaded the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to take his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets. Al-Sadr's statement, read...

He's in here!!!!! He want's a password! Here's a screenshot of my desktop....