ANGRY residents last night accused local authorities of contributing to the bushfire toll by failing to let residents chop down trees and clear up bushland that posed a fire risk.
During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne's northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council's help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," he said. "We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road … and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake."
Another resident said she had asked the council four times to tend to out-of-control growth on public land near her home, but her pleas had been ignored.
There was widespread applause when Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen said changes were likely to be made about the council's policy surrounding native vegetation.
But his response was not good enough for Mr Spooner: "It's too late now mate. We've lost families, we've lost people."
After determining the BCS championship game participants, the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.
"Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work--including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule--our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking."
Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated "The US only had two major victories--Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren't influenced by head-to-head contests--they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event."
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler said "Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks." Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn 'style points' to enhance Germany's rankings. Hitler protested "Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces."
The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented " France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2."
Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.
"I don't really like most of the players in the NBA," he confided to me in the Nets post-game locker room. "They have no sense of personal responsibility. Every mistake they make is always somebody else's fault. And look at how they just drop their sweaty uniforms, socks, and jocks on the floor. And how they do the same with the tape they've cut off their ankles. They've been pandered so much all their careers that they pay no attention to cleaning up their own messes. In here, and in their private lives, too. I've had enough of these prima donnas. Players are more mature in Europe."
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:So there you go everyone. Shield your eyes!
* abortion (5x)
* hell (4x)
* suck (2x)
* zombie (1x)
The poverty and the death and the despair among the Palestinians in Gaza moves me to tears. How can it not? Who can see pictures of children in a war zone or a slum street and not be angry and bewildered and driven to protest? And what is so appalling is that it is so unnecessary. For there can be peace and prosperity at the smallest of prices. The Palestinians need only say that they will allow Israel to exist in peace. They need only say this tiny thing, and mean it, and there is pretty much nothing they cannot have.I wonder, is this true?
"That natural population increase has been a very important factor that is attracting businesses to come to Utah and establish their manufacturing or economic facilities," Matthews says. "And furthermore, it will be one of the factors that, I think, will begin to lead us out of this housing situation, because we simply have to have more homes being built."
Do what's right. Vote for Utah because the Utes beat every team they were allowed to play and because everything about the BCS is rancid and corrupt. If you are part of the system -- and you are if you go along like sheep and vote the Florida-Oklahoma winner No. 1 -- then you're responsible for the system.
Surely you want no part in this system. This is your chance to be free of it, to stand up and do something that will be remembered, to do something for which you'll be proud, years from now, to tell your children and grandchildren you did because it needed to be done.
Some gifts people give are pointless: Styling mousse to Dick Vitale. An all-you-can-eat card to Kate Moss. The BCS Championship given to Oklahoma or Florida.
It means nothing because the BCS has no credibility. Florida? Oklahoma? Who cares? Utah is the national champion.
The End. Roll credits.
Argue with this, please. I beg you. Find me anybody else that went undefeated. Thirteen-and-zero. Beat four ranked teams. Went to the Deep South and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The same Alabama that was ranked No. 1 for five weeks. The same Alabama that went undefeated in the regular season. The same Alabama that Florida beat in order to get INTO the BCS Championship game in the first place.
'If the President and my brethren feel to sustain a poor worm of the dust like me to be Architect of the Church, let me . . . serve them and not disgrace myself. . . . May the Lord help me so to do'Boyd K. Packer, "The Temple, the Priesthood," Ensign, May 1993, 19
(Truman O. Angell Journal, 1857-8 Apr. 1868, 28 May 1867, Church Archives)."
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following editorial, among the most famous ever written, appeared in The New York Sun in 1897 and remains appropriate for this holiday season 111 years later.Follow the above link to read the rest. It really is great.
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
Dear Editor! I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun it's so.'' Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O'Hanlon.
115 West Ninety-Fifth Street.
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except (what) they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA) and your local Christmas Tree professional.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,O Holy Night quickly became a favorite in the US.
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
"The clearest result from decades of education research is the importance of teacher quality. My colleague Tom Kane finds that students who are lucky enough to get a teacher in the top quarter of the teacher-quality distribution jump 10 percentile points in the student achievement distribution relative to children who end up with less able teachers. Improving teacher quality has about twice the impact on student outcomes as radically reducing class size."
"Since the war on terror began in 2001, Washington has sounded an intermittent drumbeat for the wealthy to make a greater "sacrifice" in the form of higher taxes. The dubious charge is that these taxpayers have been shirking a duty performed in other conflicts.
The accusation bears reviewing, and its inaccuracy needs to be refuted...
America is not undertaxed. Washington is overspent — but not as a result of the current conflict. The sacrifice truly called for is on the spending side. And it would not have to be large.
Last year's federal deficit was $161 billion. As large as it sounds in nominal terms, it was 1.2% of GDP and just 5.9% of total federal spending. Less than a 6% cut in spending would have eliminated the federal deficit.
So the next time the call for "sacrifice" comes from Washington, America's response should be: Lead by example."
Others could cut costs in similar manners, but most people don't look for alternative solutions, because government solutions make sluggards of nearly all of us.That's the rub. This bus line was sold as a "something for nothing" proposition. We'll get $600k in federal money, pay next to nothing in sales tax ourselves, and Poof! we'll have a bus line. No one has to take personal responsibility for change, no one has to find alternative solutions of their own.
"The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."
So even though the Fed has flooded the credit markets with cash, spreads haven't budged because banks don't know who is still solvent and who is not. This uncertainty, says Ms. Schwartz, is "the basic problem in the credit market. Lending freezes up when lenders are uncertain that would-be borrowers have the resources to repay them. So to assume that the whole problem is inadequate liquidity bypasses the real issue."
Although there are many things to like about the government’s plan, the failure to suspend dividends is not one of them. These dividends, if they are paid at current levels, will redirect more than $25 billion of the $125 billion to shareholders in the next year alone. Taxpayers have been told that their money is required because of an urgent need to rebuild bank capital, yet a significant fraction of this money will wind up in shareholders’ pockets — and thus be unavailable to plug the large capital hole on the banks’ balance sheets.
Moreover, given their own equity stakes, the officers and directors of the nine banks will be among the leading beneficiaries of the dividend payout. We estimate that their personal take of the dividends will amount to approximately $250 million in the first year.
“Your congressman is trying to make mortgages more expensive. Ask him why he opposes the American dream of home ownership.”So said a Fannie Mae sponsored commercial issued in response to some in the federal government calling for increased regulation or competition. Unfortunately, even after a $200 billion bailout and Fannie Mae going into federal conservatorship - along with the ripple effect largely responsible for the $800 billion "rescue" bill - expensive mortgages are the least of our worries.
“Fannie Mae faced the danger that the market would pass us by,”And what was the underlying mission that Fannie felt pressure to fulfill? Artificially facilitate mortgages to ever more and more people. As a result, between 2005 and 2007 Fannie guaranteed three times as many risky loans (loans made without documentation of income or savings) as it had in all earlier years combined. And that doesn't even include subprime loans.
“We were afraid that lenders would be selling products we weren’t buying and Congress would feel like we weren’t fulfilling our mission. The market was changing, and it’s our job to buy loans, so we had to change as well.”
"Enabling these institutions to increase in size...we are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk."And increase in size they did. By July of this year they owned or guaranteed half of the $12 Trillion mortgage industry. Their scope meant just about every mortgage lender in the country, both large and small, relied on Fannie and Freddie to help them continue to make loans. Worse yet, because of the government-backed nature of the GSE's,"
Although banks are typically prohibited from concentrating their money in the stock or bonds of any one company, those regulations create an exemption for debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have long been considered the safest of investments."Not only were banks heavily reliant upon Fannie, but they were allowed to dangerously leverage themselves because Fannie was backed by the government.
Senator Biden was glib and fluent and in command of the facts — if by “in command of the facts” you mean “talks complete blithering balderdash and hogwash.” He flatly declared that Obama never said he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But, on Debate Night, the official Obama website was still boasting that he would meet Ahmadinejad “without preconditions”. He said America spends more in a month in Iraq than it’s spent in seven years in Afghanistan. Er, America has spent over $700 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. It’s spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq. But no matter. To demonstrate his command of the “facts”, Senator Biden sportingly offered up his own instant replays:
“My friend John McCain voted 422 times against tax cuts for the middle classes. Let me repeat that so the American people are clear on this. My friend John McCain voted 673 times against tax cuts for the middle classes.”
The problem was that it all sounded drearily senatorial. Mention any global crisis — civil war in Bosnia, genocide in Darfur, Russian aggression in Georgia, the lack of five-star restaurants in Wales — and Biden has been there, usually within the last two weeks, and always at public expense. What the American taxpayer gets for the Emir of Delaware’s frequent-flyer miles is harder to discern. Biden was doing his best to turn in a decent karaoke version of Lloyd Bentsen, but, unfortunately, Governor Palin declined to play Dan Quayle. That left Joe sounding like an ancient pol being generically vice-presidential. Sarah, at her best, sounded like the citizen-politician this country’s Founders intended. She hasn’t voted 397 times against this or that in the U.S. Senate, because she’s been running a state, and a town, and a commercial fishing operation. She’s a doer, not a talker, which is why so many of my fellow professional talkers disdain her.
When Regular Joe Six-Pack Bluecollar Biden tried to match her on the Main Street cred, it rang slightly wacky. “Look,” he said, “All you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time.” Why? Is he moonlighting as a checkout clerk on the evening shift? Or is he stalking that nice lady in Lighting Fixtures? As for Katie’s Restaurant, ah, I’m sure it was grand but apparently it closed in 1990. In the Diner of the Mind, the refills are endless and Senator Joe is sitting shootin’ the breeze over a cuppa joe with a couple other regular joes on adjoining stools while Betty-Jo, the sassy waitress who’s tough as nails but with a heart of gold, says Ol’ Joe, the short-order cook who’s doing his Sloppy Joes just the way the Senator likes ‘em, really appreciates the way that, despite 78 years in Washington, Joe Biden is still just the same regular Joe Six-Pack he was when he and Norman Rockwell first came in for a sarsaparilla all those years ago. But, alas, while he was jetting off for one-to-one talks with the Deputy Tourism Minister of Waziristan, the old neighborhood changed.
The Chicago Way is a road the Beltway media establishment dare not travel. It must frighten them. It conflicts with their fairy tale about Obama as reformer, and they're much too busy rummaging through garbage cans in Alaska to bother about Chicago's political alleys.
But any child in Illinois knows the Chicago Way leads through the most politically corrupt city in America, in a politically corrupt state, where muscle trumps reason, where Democratic warlords brazenly promote their offspring into public office, where even souls are offered up for sale.
The national media have never wanted to understand, much less expose, political corruption here, or examine how Obama prospered under the Daley machine's guidance. A trip down the Chicago Way would force them to re-examine their ridiculous narrative that sets Obama as a political reformer riding a white horse, or is that a winged unicorn?
For months, Mark Myers nursed the pumpkin patch in the empty lot next to his Saratoga Springs house.I found out today that the pumpkin sale was only one day - last Saturday. But the reporter of the story told me that there is a fund set up at Mountain America Credit Union. You can go to any branch and ask to contribute to the Jameson Jones fund.
It's been a tradition in the neighborhood for years now; when the pumpkins are plump and orange, kids come running to pick their favorite ones to take home. Back when it all started, next-door neighbor Cindy Jones helped plant the first seeds.
"This is something I just do for fun, just for a hobby," Myers said.
But this year, Myers tended to his pumpkins with a specific purpose. In February, he and the rest of the tight-knit neighborhood reeled from news that the Joneses' youngest child, a 3-year-old boy with Down syndrome named Jameson, was diagnosed with leukemia.
Myers and others around the block hatched a plan: The pumpkin sale this year would be a fundraiser to help the family. The neighbors sought donations for the sale and eventually secured some extra pumpkins, corn stalks and straw bales. The last step was telling the Joneses the sale was for them.
"From the moment they decided to plant the seeds, they knew they'd be donating this money to Jameson," neighbor Heather Anderson said. "Everybody in the community pitched in on this, and they had no idea the whole time."
Myers said he'll never forget the day he asked Jameson's father, Troy, to meet him in his driveway.
"He said, 'There's probably other people who could use it,'" he said. "I said, 'No, not as much as you guys could use it. You guys have been through hell and back.'"
Consistent rain didn't stop people from coming out for the sale Saturday afternoon. As friends and new faces alike paced the rows of pumpkins looking for the perfect one, Jameson got a wheelbarrow ride down the street from Myers.
I think Biden Rocked!
He came in with low expectations. Especially after the Couric interview where he had a huge gaffe of explaining that when the Stock Market crashed, FDR got on TV. I was fully expecting a gaffe-fest from him but he was able to overcome this with clearly rehearsed lines from his advisors.
But he was able to sidestep many direct questions by Ifill choosing instead to offer rebuttals to Palin’s arguments or further explain his ticket’s position.
I wasn’t that impressed how he kept using the same words over and over again like “fundamental” and how he kept having to repeat things. He did do a good job relating to the middle class by mentioning Scranton repeatedly, which we all know is a blue-collar, middle-class town.
He was only incoherent one time, trying to explain the McCain tax plan, and he made one big gaffe when he said the U.S. and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon . But I wouldn’t hold all of his Foreign Relations experience against him.
