Just another work accident
BISMARCK, N.D. -- There's plenty to talk about at the weekly women's coffee klatch in the small town of Parshall, and no one bothered to mention the unarmed booster rocket for an intercontinental ballistic missile lying in a ditch where an Air Force truck overturned.
"We talked about the oil boom, weddings -- everything under the sun," Arlene Zacher said Saturday. "But nobody ever mentioned that missile. I guess that shows that people aren't worried about it. I'm certainly not."
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Zimbabweans hunted out coins squirreled away years ago in jars and cupboards and headed for the shops, where lines built up as overburdened tellers used to counting mounds of hyper-inflated dollar notes instead were juggling silver.
The central bank, overwhelmed by stratospheric inflation in the millions of percentile, this week cut 10 zeros from the currency and reintroduced coins made obsolete in 2002 when they became worthless. A one-dollar coin now is worth 10 billion of the old dollars.
On Friday, about 20 one-dollar coins or 200 billion Zimbabwe dollars could buy a loaf of scarce bread if it could be found in a downtown supermarket. That is about (U.S.)$5 at the official rate and $2 at the black market rate that better reflects the value of the currency. "It has been a chaotic day," said Farayi Chikomba, a teller filling plastic banking bags with coins at a small supermarket at closing time. "Customers have been digging out their old coins." Lines built up as staff counted the coins.
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Maybe Bob could supply Parker House with Monopoly money
#2
Zim-Bob should make coins his only money - and make the coins out of gold, silver, platinum and copper. That would end inflation. And last I knew, they even had mines that produced those metals, before they nationalized them.
July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said U.S. President George W. Bush is seeking to relive the Cold War now that Russia is regaining its strength.
Chavez made his comments in a letter to Cuba's Fidel Castro on the 55th anniversary of an assault by Cuban revolutionaries on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. The attack is considered to mark the start of the Cuban Revolution. ``Bush, when his inevitable decline is arriving, wants to relive the Cold War,'' Chavez wrote. ``The fact that Russia has stood up has enraged the hawks and they're trying, through transnational communication, to press the fear buttons.''
Chavez visited Moscow last week and met his counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to discuss the acquisition of an air defense system and military equipment. Chavez said if Russian navy ships were to arrive in Venezuelan ports they would be welcome, and said the reactivation of the U.S. Navy's Fourth Fleet to patrol the Caribbean is a threat to Venezuela and the region.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/03/2008 13:39 ||
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#1
Projection is attributing your own repressed thoughts to someone else.
ZHUKOVSKY, Russia - At a once-secret airfield outside Moscow, test pilot Sergei Bogdan proudly introduces reporters to what was billed as the latest in Russian military aircraft technology, the Su-35 fighter-jet.
But the plane is only an upgrade of a 20-year-old model - and it can't match the speed and stealth of the U.S. F-22 Raptor, which entered service in 2005.
Former President Vladimir V. Putin, now Russia's powerful prime minister, has boasted of new weapons systems and of strengthening the armed forces, raising fears in the West of a Cold War-style military buildup. Flush with oil money, the Kremlin is in the market for new weapons. But Russia's state-run defense industries, experts say, face a crumbling manufacturing base and pervasive corruption; they have produced little advanced armament in the Putin era.
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Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Murtha is a EX Marine, not former Marine. His credo is Semper INfidelis.
The Trunks will be lucky to end up with 40 Senators and 180 Reps after the upcoming election, but if this piece of shit goes down it will all be worth it. One of these days I'll tell you what I really think.
(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama responded Saturday to criticism that he has changed his position on opposing offshore oil drilling.
Obama said Friday that he would be willing to compromise on his position against offshore oil drilling if it were part of a more overarching strategy to lower energy costs. "My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices," Obama told The Palm Beach Post early into a two-day swing through Florida.
But on Saturday morning, Obama said this "wasn't really a new position."
But on Saturday morning, Obama said this "wasn't really a new position."
"I made a general point about the fact that we need to provide the American people some relief and that there has been constructive conversations between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on this issue," he said during a press conference in Cape Canaveral. "What I will not do, and this has always been my position, is to support a plan that suggests this drilling is the answer to our energy problems. If we've got a plan on the table that I think meets the goals that America has to set and there are some things in there that I don't like, then obviously that's something that I would consider because that's the nature of how we govern in a democracy."
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/03/2008 00:00 ||
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When a limousine socialist finds himself out of his natural cocooned environment and into the real world [you know the place with bible thumping, gun toting, rednecks], they tend to act like a fish just out of water, flip flopping all over the place.
#4
If you've been following the Obama campaign, you may, like me, be wondering what his campaign slogans of "hope" and "change" really mean.
This week Obama shifted from "absolutely no off shore drilling" to "hey, drilling is a good idea". Now he tells us it "wasn't really a new position." With this latest flip-flop, the light came on as to Barack's meaning of "hope" and "change".... Obama HOPES that the voters don't notice that his positions continually CHANGE.
Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday backed away from rival John McCain's challenge for a series of joint appearances, agreeing only to the standard three debates in the fall.
Obama's reversal on town hall debates is part of a play-it-safe strategy he's adopted since claiming the nomination and grabbing a lead in national polls. Advisers to the Illinois senator, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss strategy, say Obama is reluctant to take chances or give McCain a high-profile stage now that Obama's the front-runner.
In May, when a McCain adviser proposed a series of pre-convention appearances at town hall meetings, Obama said, "I think that's a great idea." In summer stumping on the campaign trail, McCain has often noted that Obama had not followed through and joined him in any events.
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/03/2008 00:00 ||
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"Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday backed away from rival John McCain's challenge for a series of joint appearances, agreeing only to the standard three debates in the fall."
Brrawk! Chicken. [Also, insert "p" synonym for "cat" here to get around the filters.]
"We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he'll reconsider"
Yee-ouch! That's gonna leave a mark on Mr. Flip-Flop. :-D
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
08/03/2008 0:39 Comments ||
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#2
He knows if he gets off his prepared speech, he will fumble and bumble around and not look good. McCain is counting on this.
#3
Wait, wasn't this bo's idea to have a series of debates? People, if he can't debate McCain in the run-ups and confuses hollywood celebrities with Clinton when tired (already) then what the heck is he going to do in a meeting with Putin to tell him his election rhetoric was 'just words'?
This guy is an ass. I wouldn't even hire him to sell used cars never mind running the country. If he were a local he would be called a loudmouthed chickenshit.
#4
Gawd, I wish we could shitcan McPain and have a real candidate for the opposing party. This could be a runaway from this useless turd Hussein. McPain is so weak at oratory and Axelrod recognizes it. These "debates" are no such thing. They have no resemblance to debating. They are only a series of chestnuts served up by numbnuts on a panel and will give great advantage to Barry because all topics/questions will have been reviewed in advance. McPain's only chance was an extemporaneous mode like a townhall where BO could not prepare long, idiot responses in advance. Now McPain is looking at Cantor for V. P. ? The worst possible choice. He may get Jewish votes in NY & Florida, but Cantor is a corporatist on the take from K-Street donors and this will not show well to the general electorate.To save his dumb ass, McPain, more than ever, needs someone fluent and intelligent to attack, attack, attack the stupid Demo policies in general and Hussein in particular. Romney could do this well. Others could also. Apparently, McPain can't or won't. He should be putting down real hurt on the empty suit now. Not just schmoozing along and wasting valuable time to cement impressions in the voting public's mind. These people are dumb and hard to make an impression on. It takes time to impalnt a notion and have it sink in to these bimbos' brains. And McPain is letting time slip by. If the Senate goes Demo, we are going to have real problems. San Fran Nan already has the House by the nuts and what we can see coming there is outright scary.
Two days after a media frenzy following the news that Jean Duley sought legal protection from Bruce Ivins, the chief suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, Duley has gone into hiding. Duley, 45, filed for a peace order against him July 24 in Frederick County District Court, accusing him of stalking, threats and harassment. A temporary peace order was granted that day.
Duley's fiance of seven years, Mike McFadden, spoke to The Frederick News-Post on Saturday from their home in Williamsport and provided a statement on her behalf. "Jean is currently at an undisclosed location," McFadden said.
Duley had numerous meetings with the FBI in the past month, McFadden said, but he declined to provide specific information about those meetings.
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More than 120 religious pilgrims were trampled to death and 40 more were injured Sunday during a stampede in northern India, officials say.
Emergency workers said most of those killed were women and children from the Indian state of Punjab who were trampled to death when rumors of a landslide panicked a crowd at the hilltop Naina Devi temple in Himachal Pradesh, the Indo-Asian News Service reported.
The pilgrims had gathered at the temple as part of the 10-day Shravan Ashtami fair, in which devotees come to the shrine to commemorate the Hindu story of Sati, Lord Shiva's consort, whose eye, they say, fell to the ground there. The shrine is one of the most popular in the country.
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Syed Mohammad Noorur Rahman Barkati, Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Masjid here, said on Friday that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers and Steel Ram Vilas Paswan considered Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen's return to India a serious threat to the country's secularism.
"The Ministers acknowledged that the provocative text of the controversial Bangladeshi writer insulted not only Islam, but also people belonging to other religions," the Imam claimed. "Chances of Taslima's coming back to India are slim as people who are secular and respect all religions will not allow it," he said. "We will launch a massive campaign if she tries to return back by any chance."
The Imam had previously issued a fatwa against Taslima in August 2007 to leave the country. She was forced to leave the city, where she was residing after being exiled from Bangladesh, on November 22, 2007 following widespread violence by All India Minorities Forum supporters demanding the cancellation of her visa. Taslima is now in Europe and recently expressed hope of returning to India.
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/03/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Syed Mohammad Noorur Rahman Barkati, Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Masjid
Vienna: Describing the "clean and unconditional exemption" India wants from the Nuclear Suppliers Group as being of "crucial importance" to the successful implementation of the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar said on Saturday that the inclusion of conditions "would literally take away with one hand what has been given with the other."
Kakodar, India's chief negotiator with the IAEA, designed the Plutonium core for India's first atomic bomb and assembled the device at the test shaft in the Rajasthan desert in 1974. He also helped design Dhruva, India's main weapons plutonium production reactor. His latest reactor design is this - the AHWR, which will burn Thorium fuel
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu the morning after the International Atomic Energy Agency approved Indias safeguards agreement, Dr. Kakodkar also spelt out for the first time the conceptual difference between the Indian and American approaches to the NSG issue.
The suppliers group was a cartel that had rules for the sale of nuclear material to non-nuclear weapon states and its guidelines were therefore riddled with extraneous conditions which had no relevance to India, he said. "The NSG guidelines apply to non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). So our preference is for the NSG to simply say that these guidelines do not apply to India. If they are unwilling to say that, at a minimum, the requirement of full-scope safeguards and other prescriptive elements in the guidelines that are intended for NNWS must be waived for India."
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu was with his sons at a football match on Wednesday night when a tearful Ehud Olmert announced he would be stepping down as leader of his Kadima party after months of battling corruption allegations. But his mind may have wandered: for whatever happens next, Netanyahu - once the enfant terrible of Israeli politics and one of its most fascinating and controversial figures - stands to gain.
As the implications sink in of Olmert's decision - for Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Middle East - opinion polls show that the leader of the right-wing Likud opposition remains the Israeli public's preferred choice as prime minister. "Bibi is likely to be prime minister after the next elections," predicts the journalist Haim Baram, combining "gut feeling" with decades of writing about Israel's febrile, fragmented political life. And given that this is a part of the world where worst-case scenarios tend to come true, the looming crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions could galvanise squabbling politicians to close ranks and go for a grand national unity coalition: cue Netanyahu.
No wonder his immediate response was to call for early elections - the instinct of a quick-witted politician who seizes on disarray in the enemy camp and senses that his time come. "This government has reached an end and it doesn't matter who heads Kadima. They are all partners in this government's total failure," he declared on Thursday. "If Bibi sees he can precipitate elections, he will," says the political analyst Yossi Alpher. "But it's impossible to predict what's going to happen. There are too many variables."
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Posted by: Fred ||
08/03/2008 00:00 ||
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Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is locked in what is widely acknowledged to be a two-person race for the Kadima chairmanship against Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said on Friday that the latest poll numbers indicating an advantage in favor of his rival are bound to change. "I wouldn't advise anyone to base the future on polls," Mofaz, who is holding discussions in the United States with Bush administration officials over Iran's nuclear program, said on Friday. "[The polls] are a mood, and this will change. I'm sure that I will win the primaries."
Livni would lead Kadima to victory over Likud if elections were held today, according to a special poll conducted by Dialog on Thursday on behalf of Haaretz.
The results of the poll are expected to have a dramatic effect on Livni's standing inside Kadima and on her race with Mofaz for the party's leadership.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/03/2008 00:00 ||
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Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released yesterday, reveal that although the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect.
Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter-million people since 1998 -- largely because of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a decade ago.
In December, The Washington Post reported that the CDC was revising HIV incidence upward to 50,000 to 60,000 cases a year. Yesterday's announcement -- and the publication of a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association -- is the first official acknowledgment of the new, higher estimate.
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Posted by: Bobby ||
08/03/2008 06:35 ||
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Where's the hetero AIDS pan epidemic were were promised in the 80s by the media? The one we were scared with in order to generate research funding equal to that of cancer, even though ten times as many people die in the US from cancer than AIDS.
#3
If you can't keep it in your pants you may catch the AIDS and die, its a simple concept. There is a totally free way to prevent HIV, its called a rubber. They give them away at any health clinic.
Why is this so hard to understand?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
July 28 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said U.S. President George W. Bush is seeking to relive the Cold War now that Russia is regaining its strength.
(CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama responded Saturday to criticism that he has changed his position on opposing offshore oil drilling. 
Democratic candidate Barack Obama on Saturday backed away from rival John McCain's challenge for a series of joint appearances, agreeing only to the standard three debates in the fall.
Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu was with his sons at a football match on Wednesday night when a tearful Ehud Olmert announced he would be stepping down as leader of his Kadima party after months of battling corruption allegations. But his mind may have wandered: for whatever happens next, Netanyahu - once the enfant terrible of Israeli politics and one of its most fascinating and controversial figures - stands to gain.
Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is locked in what is widely acknowledged to be a two-person race for the Kadima chairmanship against Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said on Friday that the latest poll numbers indicating an advantage in favor of his rival are bound to change. "I wouldn't advise anyone to base the future on polls," Mofaz, who is holding discussions in the United States with Bush administration officials over Iran's nuclear program, said on Friday. "[The polls] are a mood, and this will change. I'm sure that I will win the primaries." 
