Good morning…another Monday and another quiz…..I decided to take it easy on the class today.
The question for thios week is ….who were the three founding faters that died on the 4th of July?
If they got any easier….there would be no challenge. Have a day and please exit quietly.
– Every single man knows: Walking a dog in the park is a sure babe magnet. Saudi Arabia’s Islamic religious police, in their zeal to keep the sexes apart, want to make sure the technique doesn’t catch on here.
The solution: Ban selling dogs and cats as pets, as well as walking them in public.
The prohibition went into effect Wednesday in the capital, Riyadh, and authorities in the city say they will strictly enforce it _ unlike previous bans in the cities of Mecca and Jiddah, which have been ignored and failed to stop pet sales.
Violators found outside with their pets will have their beloved poodles and other furry companions confiscated by agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, the official name of the religious police, tasked with enforcing Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamic code.
The commission’s general manager, Othman al-Othman, said the ban was ordered because of what he called “the rising of phenomenon of men using cats and dogs to make passes at women and pester families” as well as “violating proper behavior in public squares and malls.”
The religious police prowl streets and malls throughout the kingdom, ensuring unmarried men and women do not mix, confronting women they feel are not properly covered or urging men to go to prayers.
They also often make attempts to plug the few holes in the strict gender segregation that innovations bring. In 2004, for example, they tried to ban cameras on cell phones, fearing that men and women would exchange pictures of each other _ though the prohibition was quickly revoked.
You think it is hard to meet the perfect woman in the US…then stay away from Saudi Arabia.
Who is responsible for the last couple of gas shortages and high prices? The media and oil industry economists say it is YOU, the consumer. Why? Because YOU are demanding more and more product. Now, do you agree with this? If you do you are an idiot!
For over a decade the oil giants spent millions upon millions buying and renting scientists and researchers to debunk the whole global warming theory. That did not work as they intended, or did it? Butr now they are selling the consumer a bill of goods on just how hard they are working on finding solutions to our energy addiction.
The leadership of the oil companies knew years ago what was coming yet they decided to help it along by showing just how kookie those concerned with the health of the environment were. Instead of putting mush needed money into alt research. These guys WILL not ever find a solution that they cannot charge for. So we are left with ethanol and other such additives.
Yes, the American people are gluttons where oil and gas are concerned, but that sin could have been eliminated in the 70’s, but the industry saw fit to just help feed the addiction. So, who is to blame? The people for being stupid and the oil industry for worsening our addiction.
Now, is there a solution? Of course, but not one that the oil industry will provide.
The contract negotiated by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) with the telecommunications company Verizon represents a betrayal of the 65,000 Verizon workers represented by the two unions. It cuts benefits and sets the stage for the company to eliminate thousands of jobs.
The agreement was reached one week after the August 2 expiration of the previous five-year contract. The unions refused to call a strike, despite a 91 percent vote to authorize a walkout. Instead, various protest stunts were organized while the membership was kept in the dark not only about the status of the negotiations, but even about the unions’ demands.
Workers and retirees will see a continued erosion of their living standards. The three-year pact calls for wage and pension increases of 3.25 percent, 3.5 percent and 3.75 percent, with a cost-of-living increase in only the final year. Already this year, the consumer price index has risen well beyond the wage increases in the contract. According to the US government, transportation costs have risen 13.4 percent since last year and energy costs are up a whopping 19.3 percent over just one year ago.
On health care, workers in New York and the New England states will be forced into a preferred providers organization, or PPO. Under the PPO, workers will be able to see only those doctors approved by the plan and will have to get referrals before seeing a specialist. Many services are not covered and there is a cap on benefits.
Both active and retired workers will see their prescription drug program cut and will be forced to pay a larger share of the cost of brand name medications.
The contract also sets the stage for Verizon to eliminate thousands of jobs. Since 2003, when the last contract was signed, Verizon has cut 13,000 union jobs and approximately 40,000 management jobs through attrition and layoffs. In addition, Verizon has forced thousands of other workers, mostly in management, to either move or be laid off and replaced by younger, lower-salary employees.
Union leadership continues down the path of helping the corporations to rape the worker of the benefits that they have fought for for so long. With the approach of an election, I do not see the worker any better off, no matter who gets elected.
This is from an article in Time.
Frustration over the sluggish pace of Iraq’s oil production is rising in the country and abroad as global prices soar. (At the same time, current oil revenues account for 90% of the government’s substantial budget surplus of roughly $50 billion, unspent because of inefficient infrastructure and bureaucracy.) Much of Iraq starves for electricity and fuel as vast amounts of oil and gas sit untapped in the ground. Iraq’s oil industry needs a virtual overhaul to reach a level of production that could erase chronic fuel shortages in the country and rake in windfall profits to be had on the world market. The Iraqi government and more than two dozen oil companies are in the midst of drafting plans to begin the work. But the chances of success anytime soon are far from certain. Political pitfalls in Baghdad and ground realities in areas where resources rest could undo the long awaited bonanza before it begins.
In April, Iraq’s Ministry of Oil drew up an elite roster of companies ranging from Malaysia’s Petronas to Russia‘s Gazprom. The list of 35 corporations, including six American giants, reads like a who’s who of global oil players, all of whom are invited to bid on eight major oil and gas projects Iraq wants to launch next year. The goal is to get Iraq, currently producing about 2 million barrels a day, pumping up to 3 million by the end of 2009. The eight oil projects on offer to outside companies chiefly involve refurbishing and developing various oil and gas fields in southern Iraq. American and Iraqi officials say the projects can go forward without passage of a long-delayed national oil law, as long as each contract individually is approved by the Iraqi government and endorsed by the parliament.
In the largely autonomous Kurdish territories of northern Iraq, the regional government is already moving ahead with oil deals of its own that the central government in Baghdad considers illegal. For the most part only small wildcatter firms have bypassed Baghdad for such deals, since their future legality remains uncertain in the absence of a national oil law. Most big players at present appear to be eyeing potential ventures in Iraq’s vast oil territory around Basra instead. Years of neglect have left many oil fields there looking like junkyards. Rusting vehicles, heaps of trash and pools of spilled oil litter a hazy expanse dotted with plumes of flames from gas flares. “We need equipment, we need instruments, we need a lot of technical help,” says Jabbar al-Ueaibi, the head of South Oil Company, an arm of Iraq’s Ministry of Oil.
But any oil company looking to get involved in Iraq faces some major disincentives. Without an oil law, which appears unlikely any time soon because of political bickering, companies wanting to start work in Iraq must essentially lobby both the Iraqi parliament and the government, which rarely find consensus. Two of the biggest projects, gas fields in the provinces of Anbar and Diyala, sit in territory plagued by violence and tribal politics. And none of the ventures are likely to allow companies to have a stake in any newly discovered oil reserves, the real moneymaking prize. “These deals themselves are not likely to be hugely lucrative,” says Charles Ries, the American embassy’s economic coordinator in Iraq.
18 August
Radio station WEVD, created by the Socialist Party and named for its recently deceased leader, leader Eugene V. Debs, went on the air in New York City – 1927
Really? What would those be?
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said two decades of work to bring Russia into the international community must be reassessed in the wake of its actions in Georgia, while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that Russia’s actions “look like they do belong to the Soviet Union.”
The Bush administration’s two senior defense and foreign affairs officials made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows with harsh words for Russia, citing consequences for Moscow but offering few specifics.
“There’s no doubt there will be further consequences,” Rice said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There have already been significant consequences for Russia.”
She said, for instance, that “any notion that Russia was the kind of responsible state, ready to integrate into international institutions” is now a nation “in tatters.”
Gates said the ultimate consequences for Russia would depend on how quickly they comply with the cease-fire. “I think that the whole world is looking at Russia through a different set of lenses. … The longer they take to get out and to observe the cease-fire that’s been declared and the arrangements that have been worked out, I think the greater those consequences will be,” he said.
As reported in the Washington Post.
About the only thing in the Warren Forum that was interesting was when the candidates were asked what theiur definition of “rich”.
Obama didn’t hesitate. “I would argue that if you are making more than $250,000, then you are in the top 3, 4 percent of this country,” he said. “You are doing well.”
McCain took a far more discursive approach to answering the question but ultimately settled on a dramatically higher figure: “I think if you’re just talking about income, how about $5 million?”
Obama’s answer made a bit of sense, but the McCain response was well….a bit stupid. Does he really think that or was he just trying to inject a little humor….if the later then he failed.
Ken Goldstein, an economist for the Conference Board, a business-research group based in New York, said he would define rich as income about $500,000 or more. “If you set the bar at half a million, you’re talking about the top 1% of taxpayers. If you think about the last eight years, those are the folks who have benefited the most.”
Other economists said they would have gone with a lower figure. Even the moderator who asked the question of the candidates, Pastor Rick Warren of Orange County’s Saddleback Church, did not seem to anticipate a reply beyond the lower six figures, urging each man to “give me a specific number . . . is it 100,000 [dollars], is it 50, 200?”