Salisbury News: 10/04/12

Thursday, October 04, 2012

Romney's Big Bird Comments Spark Response From The Bird Himself

- UPDATE: The handle @BigBirdRomney appears to be suspended, as does a similar Twitter account, @FiredBigBird.

EARLIER STORY: Uh-oh.
In Wednesday night's first presidential debate, Republican candidate Mitt Romney upset an unlikely...person?

"I'm sorry, Jim. I'm going to the stop the subsidy to PBS. I like Big Bird. I like you," Romney said.

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Jailers Accused Of Sending Inmates On Unsupervised Beer Runs

Two corrections officers at American Samoa's only jail are accused of letting some inmates leave the jail to go on shopping trips for beer and chips.

Officers Fiti Aina and Rocky Tua are being investigated after one of the Territorial Correctional Facility's inmates escaped.

According to court documents, one inmate said he was allowed to travel outside the jail to buy beer for a fellow inmate and also to pick up chips and cookies for Officer Tua.

The Philadelphia cop caught on video punching a woman in the face will be fired, according to ABC News' Philadelphia station WPVI.

A video posted on YouTube shows Lt. Jonathan Josey punching a woman in the face and knocking her to the ground before she is led off bloodied and handcuffed.

Earlier today, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said it intends to drop the disorderly conduct charge against the woman who was hit.

Sex Trafficking Now An ‘Epidemic’

Six months ago, Barbara Amaya said she was watching a story on television about teenage girls being trafficked for sex in her Northern Virginia neighborhood when she realized that she, too, had been the victim of sex trafficking — four decades earlier.

“I didn’t know I had been trafficked,” she told an audience during a panel discussion on human trafficking sponsored by the Universal Peace Federation and the Women's Federation for World Peace at The Washington Times. “I viewed myself as a prostitute.”

Michael Moore to Obama - 'This is what happens when u pick John Kerry as your debate coach'

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore was disappointed with President Barack Obama's performance at the first debate at the University of Denver on Wednesday night and, he made his views known on Twitter to his over one million one hundred thousand followers. Moore was also angry with PBS debate moderator Jim Lehrer, saying that "[Clint] Eastwood's chair would do a better job moderating..." :

Here's a sample of some of Mr. Moore's tweets:

AARP Bashes Obama For Using It To Promote Himself in Debate

The AARP ripped President Barack Obama for using the organization’s name to support himself politically during Wednesday evening’s presidential debate.

“While we respect the rights of each campaign to make its case to voters, AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign,” AARP vice president John Hishta said in a statement immediately after the debate. “AARP is a nonpartisan organization, and we do not endorse political candidates nor coordinate with any candidate or political party.”

The president mentioned AARP to support his attack on Romney’s Medicare plan.

Politicians Like Obama Change Accents 'In Front Of Jewish Groups,' 'Italian Groups' To Relate To Them, Juan Williams Says

Both white and black politicians change their accents “in front of Jewish groups” and “in front of Italian groups,” Fox News Contributor Juan Williams told “Hannity’s America” last night.

Host Sean Hannity and Williams were discussing a video of Barack Obama taped in 2007 in which then-Senator Obama appeared to use a different accent while speaking to a predominantly black audience at Hampton University in Virginia.

Hannity asked Williams: “Does he [Obama] sound the same?”

U.S. Births Down For 4th Year

U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.

But there may be a silver lining: The decline in 2011 was just 1 percent — not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in other recent years.

"It may be that the effect of the recession is slowly coming to an end," said Carl Haub, a senior demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.

Not many folks change their own oil anymore.

Fewer still are women.

And I'll bet you a week's pay there's not another woman on the planet who continues to change her own oil at the age of 102.

Meet Margaret Dunning of Plymouth.

I'm serious. Born in 1910. Still sharp. Still spunky. Still crawling around under the hood with a funnel and an oil pan.

In his first appearance since his widely panned debate performance, President Obama Thursday accused Republican nominee Mitt Romney of deceiving voters in the rivals’ first face-off of the campaign Wednesday night.

“When I got onto the stage, I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney,” Mr. Obama told supporters at a rally in Denver. “But it couldn’t have been Mitt Romney, because the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy. The fellow on the stage last night said he didn’t know anything about that.”

The president didn’t refer to his own debate performance, which was criticized from the right and left as unfocused, stumbling and passionless. Instant polls showed that most viewers felt Mr. Romney won the debate by a significant margin.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Islamist militant group Hamas, which has ruled Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 2007, is coming under increasing fire — not from its avowed enemy Israel, but from former allies, human rights groups and even its own citizens.

Meanwhile, its chief cause — the creation of a Palestinian state — has been almost forgotten amid the post-Arab Spring turmoil in the Middle East, with the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, the deepening civil war in Syria and growing violence between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq.

The Maryland Transportation Authority is drafting legislation that it hopes will make it easier for the agency to collect unpaid video tolling citations.

Between 2008-2012, nearly 35% of video tolling citations went unpaid totalling roughly $6.7 million in lost revenue. After the Washington Post reported on the MDTA’s struggle to get car rental companies to pay on their outstanding tolling debt, it caught the attention of the Maryland Board of Public Works — made up of the governor, comptroller and treasurer.

Harold Bartlett, MDTA executive secretary, told the powerful board Wednesday that currently there is no law allowing the MDTA to suspend vehicle registrations and use tougher tactics to get violators to pay, similar to what is done with unpaid parking and speeding tickets.

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Chesapeake Bay Forest Buffer Restoration Down

Higher crop prices are being blamed for a drop in forest restoration in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

The Chesapeake Bay Program says restoration of forest buffer areas along creeks and streams dropped to less than a third of the level reached at the peak of the program in 2005. The regional partnership says 815 miles were restored in 2005 compared to 240 miles last year. The bay program says the buffers keep fertilizer and manure from running off farm fields into waterways, where it can cause algae blooms that harm water quality.

More than 95% Of Incarcerated Baltimore Juveniles Are Minorities

More than 95 percent of the juveniles behind bars in Baltimore City are minorities.

The staggering numbers have forced the state to take a closer look at the problem and that started Wednesday with a statewide conference involving experts in the fields of criminal justice, education and mental health.

These were not the kinds of problems that could be solved in a one-day conference, experts said. At issue is why so many minority youth are being arrested and detained, unequally, all across the state.

Homeland Security Data Centers Produce 'Predominantly Useless Information'

Imagine having all the downsides of Big Brother and none of the benefits: That's what you get with the Department of Homeland Security's vast network of "fusion" centers, according to a damning new report by the Senate's bipartisan Subcommittee on Investigations.

The fusion centers, described by Janet Napolitano as "one of the centerpieces of our counterterrorism strategy," allegedly invade the privacy of Americans while producing "shoddy" reports that are typically "irrelevant" and "useless." It's the sort of report that will find a home on every Ron Paul fan forum and, according to reporters, with good reason: The 77 centers, which have cost an estimated $289 million to $1.4 billion, have a pretty questionable track record. Here are some of the more surprising elements journalists have dug up from the report:

Invasions of privacy. NBC News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff found some especially embarrassing reports about seemingly pointless surveillance of U.S. Muslims:

After noticing strange bites on their bodies, several students in South Campus Commons 7 discovered they had bedbugs in their apartments.

Bedbugs have plagued Commons apartments for the last couple of years. They became such a prominent problem that Commons officials added a bedbug clause to the lease in May 2011, which states students must prove their rooms are bedbug-free when their leases end. While the addendum also requires tenants take certain precautions against bedbugs, such as not bringing in furniture from off the street and notifying management if they believe there may be an infestation in their apartment, students have still found themselves facing the same problems this year.

U.S. States Teetering On Brink Of Fiscal Cliff, Ganeriwala Says

The possibility of automatic federal budget cuts threatens U.S. states’ well-being, even as their revenue recovers, said Manju Ganeriwala, the incoming president of the National Association of State Treasurers.

“We’re approaching the cliff, and hopefully it’s a climbing down and not just jumping from the cliff,” Ganeriwala, Virginia’s treasurer, said today at the State & Municipal Finance Conference hosted by Bloomberg Link in New York.

If Congress doesn’t agree on how to reduce the federal deficit, states may lose funding and jobs when $600 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts take effect in January, said Ganeriwala, 56, who will head the association next year. That may further hinder progress for governments that cut jobs as tax revenue fell. The number of public positions in 2011 shrank by 1.3 percent, about 280,000 positions, according to data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. More than half those positions were from state and city administrations.

States already are confronting the “stupidity factor” of Congress’s waiting until the last minute to act, said Chipman Flowers Jr., the Delaware treasurer.

Al Gore Blames Denver Altitude for Obama Debate Performance

Al Gore thinks that the altitude in Denver, Colo., is to blame for President Obama’s lackluster debate performance. More

Maryland Has Least Compact Congressional Districts In Nation

Maryland is still the undisputed U.S. champion when it comes to drawing sprawling, weirdly shaped congressional districts, according to a soon-to-be-released national study.

Maryland has the least compact congressional districts in the nation, based on four mathematical tools for compactness, Azavea, a geographic information services firm in Philadelphia, plans to report in a white paper.

The 3rd Congressional District, zigzagging from Towson to Silver Spring to Annapolis is the third least compact of the 435 congressional districts in the United States, the study found. The 6th Congressional District that runs 177 miles from Potomac to Oakland at Maryland’s far western border is the 9th least compact. The 2nd Congressional District that includes parts of Anne Arundel, Howard, Baltimore and Harford counties is the 11th least compact congressional district.

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Romney Smacks Down Obama In Debate

Republican nominee Mitt Romney has clearly been practicing for tonight's presidential debate.

He really hit his stride in the second 15-minute segment of the debate, when the questions turned to the issue of the debt and the federal deficit.

Asked about the deficit, President Barack Obama launched into a pseudo-rambling spiel attacking Romney on everything from Big Energy

subsidies, to refusing to raise taxes on the highest income earners, to tax breaks that go to companies moving jobs overseas.

But Romney was ready for all of it.

Asked to respond, Romney shook his head, "Well, he covered a lot of topics there."

Then he turned the energy subsidies attack right around, calling Obama out for clean-energy loan failures like Solyndra: "I have a friend who says, you don't pick winners and losers, you just pick losers."

And then came Romney's real coup, on Obama's claim that businesses get tax breaks for shipping

jobs overseas: "I've been in business for 25 years, and I have no idea what you're talking about."

Administrators Address Language Barriers Between Employees

With a growing Spanish-speaking workforce and diverse campus community, university employees sometimes experience difficulty communicating with one another, prompting officials to increase supervisor training and English as a second language courses.

More than 100 employees, 44 of whom are enrolled this semester, have participated in ESL classes since the spring semester as part of a nine-step plan developed nearly a year and a half ago to address alleged workplace abuse, said Human Resources Director Dale Anderson. Because workers can now nominate themselves for the classes, there is a waiting list of about 35 to 40 people, and the program will likely take about 60 people in the spring, Anderson said.

The Three Types Of People You Should Fire Right Away

There’s no more challenging job than being the person who has to fire people. Everyone else gets to talk about what a tight-knit, stick-together group the company is (just like a “family” of friends), but you’re the one who has to deliver the bad news over and over again. It’s not easy or always popular to be the boss, but then good leadership isn’t a popularity contest. If you were unpopular in high school, you’re already one step ahead of the game.

But the fact is, your company is only as good as its weakest employee

. Here are the folks you need to fire — sooner rather than later.

No effort, no heart. Sometimes it’s a breeze. We try to immediately fire any employee who doesn’t try or doesn’t care. These are the cardinal sins in a start-up, so there isn’t much angst in letting these folks go. Then the job gets harder.

All effort, no results. The next tier of troublesome employees

are those who try hard but just cannot do the job. They are totally sincere, but incapable (or no longer capable) of doing the job that needs to get done. There are good people who are perfectly able to do a job poorly for a very long time before anyone has the time, interest, or guts to ask the hard questions about results rather than effort. These people need to go too, but you need to be fair and firm with them. Do them a real favor and tell them the truth.

Poor fit. Then there are the employees who are basically hard-working and dedicated, but who (for better or worse) can’t fit into the corporate culture. Every business

that I’ve been involved with has ultimately been about hard work mixed with a healthy dose of paranoia. We had lots of ways to reflect this ethic and plenty of signs all over the place. “Hard work conquers everything.” “Effort can trump ability.” “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that someone's not out to get you.” And so on. And almost everyone we hired got the message and drank the Kool-Aid. Even the people who just wanted a “job” pretty much worked their butts off.

Utah's Hogle Zoo has a new resident: a baby giraffe.

The zoo says the 6-foot bundle of leggy joy was born Sept. 23, and mom and baby girl are doing great. They spent the past week bonding and were displayed to the public in the giraffe yard for the first time Wednesday.

Hogle Zoo has displayed giraffes since 1969 and has had 16 successful giraffe births.

'Detroit Three' Are Losing Sales To Foreign Rivals — Again

September's U.S. car and truck sales results are proof that whatever grace period Detroit's auto makers had from competition-as-usual in their home market is over. It's true that September was a tough month for Detroit brands. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Fiat S.p.A's Chrysler Group LLC combined to sell 44% of the cars and light trucks delivered in September, down from 48% a year ago, according to figures compiled by Autodata. Where did those four percentage points of share go? To Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., which together picked up 4.4 percentage points of market share in September, thanks to big jumps in sales for the Toyota Corolla (+43%), the Honda Accord (+57%) and the Toyota Prius (+103%.)
Source: The Wall Street Journal

Foods That Trigger Headaches

For many headache and migraine sufferers, certain foods can act as triggers.

One viewer sent this question to Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing health editor of FoxNews.com:

Dear Dr. Manny,
I've noticed that whenever I eat red grapes I get a headache. Could there be something in them that is causing this to happen?
Thanks, Jay

Alvarez said grapes are low in calories and rich in vitamin C and fiber, so they are a nutritional snack. But they also contain a substance called tyramine, a naturally occurring amino acid that forms from the breakdown of protein in food as it ages.

In September of 2012 Cpl. Edgar of the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office K-9 unit entered the second annual Deputy Kyle Pagerly K-9 trial. Deputy Kyle Pagerly, a Berks County Pennsylvania Sheriff’s Deputy K-9 handler, was shot and killed in 2011 while serving a warrant as part of a fugitive task force at a home on Pine Swamp Road in Albany Township.

When task force members arrived at the scene the suspect ran into the woods. Deputy Pagerly and his canine pursued the suspect. When officers located him he opened fire with an AK-47, striking Deputy Pagerly in the head. Other officers returned fire and killed the subject.

The Kyle Pagerly K-9 Trials raises money for the Deputy Kyle Pagerly memorial fund.

Cpl. Edgar and her K-9 Partner Jonka, took first place in obedience. During the speed trial Jonka reach a speed of 26.8 miles per hour in chasing down a target making her the third fastest K-9 in the competition.

On a sadder note Retired K-9 Toby, a Springer spaniel, who served for 9 years as an explosive detection K-9 passed away. Sir Toby of Worcester, his official name, was born and trained in England as an explosive detection K-9. He frequently searched the Worcester County Court house for explosives as a precautionary measure. He was called on by many other jurisdictions in and outside the State of Maryland to search for explosives and guns.

He was instrumental in many cases locating hand guns that were used in crimes.

Toby had just begun enjoying his retirement becoming an avid pool swimmer.

K-9 Sir Toby of Worcester will be missed by the members of the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office and especially his handler DFC. Lewis.

Philippine Prisoners dancing Gangnam Style!

Due to insistent public demand, the world renowned dancing inmates of Cebu finally had their own version of Psy's Gangnam Style music video.

God Bless Worcester County

Let Your Phone Dress You: Smart Socks That Match Themselves

There's new hope for men who have trouble matching their socks.

Swiss company Black Socks have produced a product called Plus socks for those of us who can't tell blue from black socks.

It works like this: The mismatcher buys the Plus socks kit containing ten pairs of socks and a digital reader. The reader connects wirelessly to the owners blue tooth on their phone. An app on the phone can then tell them exactly which socks match.

Largest, oldest boat show arrives in Annapolis Oct. 4-8

There's a cool breeze in the air, the slightest hint of changing color on the trees and the United States Sailboat Show is getting ready to open for the 43rd year in Annapolis.

Organizers say the Sailboat Show is the oldest and largest new in-water boat show in the world. It will be followed by the Power Boat Show three days later.

It's Not America Anymore

Many of us in the liberty movement find ourselves searching for a distinct root cause of the trials and tribulations of American culture — the Holy Grail catalyst that, if unraveled, would save this country and heal the septic wounds covering the landscape of our hobbled society. The obvious answer would be to remove the global elites who are poisoning the well from the picture entirely. Yes, this has to be done eventually. However, we must also identify how those elites have been able to so thoroughly con the masses of this nation for so long.

What inherent weakness has made us susceptible to manipulation? For this question, there are NO easy answers. But, if I had to choose a single frailty of our collective psyche as paramount to our downfall, I would say that Americans most of all are confounded by their own patriotism. We often embrace the ideal without knowing what it really means.

There are in fact two kinds of patriotism: the concrete, and the imagined. Many Americans fall haphazardly into the fantasy of being patriotic. They define patriotism upon the exploits of the mainstream and of the government in control at the time. They become cheerleaders for the establishment instead of stalwart champions of their country’s founding principles. In fact, true patriotism is NOT about blindly defending one’s nation or leadership regardless of its trespasses; true patriotism is about defending the philosophy that made one’s nation possible and prosperous in the first place — even if that means standing against the power structure in place today.

I often hear the uneducated and unaware claim that America and its principles have been a bane to the rest of the world. They say America is at the center of the vampire squid, flailing its vicious tentacles against innocent foreign civilizations. This is an oversimplification at best. The crimes that these well-meaning but naïve activists scorn cannot be attributed to “America” because the American ideal has been completely abandoned by those in the seat of power in our modern era. We do not live in “America” — at least, not the America that the Founding Fathers and authors of the Constitution created. Therefore, the original philosophy that gave birth to America is not the issue, the abuse and neglect of that philosophy is.

America has been ransacked and deformed into a hideous lampoon of its former self. This has been done for the most part through the destruction of the guiding principles we pretend we still hold onto as a culture, but in reality have cast aside. If we are ever to undo the damage that has already been done, we have to rediscover what the original design of America was. Wailing and growling about the inadequacies of the present does nothing unless we also establish where it is that we have fallen from grace. What is America supposed to be? What did the Founders truly intend?

America Is Supposed To Be Controlled By The People

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The Politics Of Fear In America: A Nation At War With Itself

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams. America is entering a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook posts, and law-abiding Americans are being subjected to the latest in government spy technology.

These threats to our freedoms are not to be underestimated. Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language they are couched in – the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

This language of fear has given rise to a politics of fear whose only aim is to distract and divide us. A perfect example of this masterful use of the politics of fear to cow the populace is the government’s War on Drugs. Reputedly a response to crime and poverty in inner cities and suburbia, it has been the driving force behind the militarization of the police, at all levels, over the past 40 years. While it has failed to decrease drug use, it has exacerbated social problems by expanding America’s rapidly growing prison system and allowing police carte blanche access to our homes and personal property.

Support For Hudsons Continues To Grow As Trial Driven By Waterkeeper Alliance Approaches On October 9

Willards, Md. – After a very successful summer of fundraising and advocating for family farms, SaveFarmFamilies.org is looking to continue that momentum as the trial between the Berlin, Md-based Hudson Farm and the New York-based Waterkeeper Alliance approaches on October 9th. Over the last few months, SaveFarmFamilies.org has seen support continue to grow and thanks all of its members for their support. SaveFarmFamilies.org looks forward to the start of the trial so the Hudsons can make their case in court and present their side of the story.

Over the summer months, SaveFarmFamilies.org was able to raise additional funds for the Hudsons’
legal defense through a number of fundraisers, such as a tractor and truck pull and soybean field day
reception and silent auction. The organization also launched an awareness campaign that resulted in
hundreds of yard signs, a billboard, and a plane flying over Ocean City, Md., with a
SaveFarmFamilies.org banner. An upcoming fundraiser will be held on Saturday, October 13 at
Hooper’s Crab House in West Ocean City, hosted by the Worcester County Farm Bureau. Details are
available at http://www.savefarmfamilies.org/wp-content/themes/news/pdfs/2012%20Poster.pdf.

“The show of support we have received has been incredible. People throughout Maryland and around
the country have rallied together to make their voice heard on the Hudsons’ behalf,” said Andrew
McLean, president of Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc. and a SaveFarmFamilies.org member. “We
know that any farmer could have been the target of the Waterkeepers’ frivolous lawsuit and we are
looking forward to a favorable outcome to the trial next month.”

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Truckers are already entering their second week of strikes in South Africa, and the economy is beginning to show cracks in the facade.

Now, ATMs are running out of cash.

Gas stations are running out of fuel.

Hospitals are running out of vital supplies.

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Thursday, October 04, 2012