Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS NIGHT AT THE SHOREBIRDS

"DON'T WAIT. COMMUNICATE.”

Salisbury, MD. –
Dorchester, Somerset, Sussex, Wicomico and Worcester counties invite the public to Emergency Preparedness Night on August 29rd at Arthur W. Perdue Stadium. The Delmarva Shorebirds will play against the Hickory Crawdads at 7:05 p.m.

This year’s theme is “Don’t Wait. Communicate. Make Your Emergency Plan Today.” Representatives from local health departments, emergency management agencies, and volunteer organizations will host exhibit booths promoting emergency preparedness before and during the baseball game.

Come out to the ballpark to support the Shorebirds and learn how you can be better prepared for life’s curve balls.

The event is co-sponsored by the health departments and emergency management offices of Dorchester, Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester Counties, Ocean City and the Maryland and Delaware Offices of Emergency Management.

So True


Biden-Warren Ticket 2016 -- Democrats' Plan B

Joe Biden had good reasons to huddle privately with Elizabeth Warren on Saturday at his official residence. The Massachusetts senator may have chosen not to run next year, but her populist rhetoric and agenda dominate the 2016 Democratic contest. Should Biden challenge Hillary Clinton for the nomination, he will need either Warren’s neutrality or her blessing.

Socialist Bernie Sanders isn’t the only candidate pounding the drums of class warfare. Hillary claims “the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” attacks high-level corporate salaries, and says that “we have to go beyond Dodd-Frank” in passing laws to rein in Wall Street firms. All of these themes are straight from Elizabeth Warren’s playbook and bear scant resemblance to the centrism that Bill Clinton embraced as president in the 1990s. But Warren is stoutly refusing to endorse any candidate, so far preferring to use her leverage to influence the entire Democratic field. In an interview on Friday, she told WBZ in Boston: “I don’t think anyone has been anointed.”

More

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

History of the Bikini in France



This is 'the danger'

Stock markets around the world are getting bludgeoned, and there is no shortage of reasons that may be behind it.

One big theme this year has been the longtime sell-off of commodities, which are more sensitive to the demands of the economy. For the most part, analysts had tied this sell-off to the slowdown in China's economy, the second largest in the world.

Interestingly, the S&P 500 has managed to decouple from commodities.

But with stocks tumbling, are we at risk of a recoupling? Because if commodity prices don't pick up, then stock prices will have to go down.

"Markets are afraid of further economic weakness in China, further pain in global commodity markets and uncertain about Fed and PBoC policy — what they will do and what the impact will be," Societe Generale's Kit Juckes wrote on Monday. "The divergence between global commodity prices and equities is not a new theme but the danger now is that they begin to re-correlate - as they did when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and what had previously been an emerging market crisis became a US recession."

More

Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Child Pornography Arrest

(Bowie, MD) Members of the Maryland State Police, Computer Crimes Section, Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) arrest Prince George’s County individual on child pornography related charges.

The suspect is identified as David Carl Tranberg, 40, from Bowie, Maryland. He was arrested without incident. Tranberg was charged with child pornography related charges during an investigation into child exploitation.

On August 25th, 2015 after a month long investigation, a search and seizure warrant was executed in Prince George’s County, Maryland by the Maryland State Police Computer Crimes Unit, Department of Homeland Security Investigations and Naval Criminal Investigative Services. Investigators identified Tranberg as the focus of the investigation. Investigators arrested Tranberg on scene charging him with four counts of Distributing Child Pornography and four counts of Possession of Child Pornography. Tranberg was transported to the Prince George’s County Detention Center where he was waiting to see a District Court Commissioner.

The Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is comprised of police agencies from around the state. Its primary mission is to protect children from computer-facilitated sexual exploitation. The Task Force works cooperatively with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to provide resources to combat these crimes. Additionally, the Task Force provides community awareness campaigns helping to prevent the spread of these crimes through education.

Police fear airshow crash toll could rise to 20

The death toll after a vintage fighter jet ploughed into a busy road in southern England while performing an acrobatics display could approach 20, police said on Monday, as Britain announced new safety restrictions on airshows.

The Hawker Hunter plane, of a type developed by Britain in the 1950s, struck several cars on Saturday on the major road next to Shoreham airport near Brighton, where the show was taking place.

The crash was the third - and by far the most deadly - at the event since 2007.

Police said on Sunday they feared 11 people had died. A senior officer said that figure was likely to rise as police gained access to more areas of the accident scene.

More

18th-century shipwreck discovered in Vienna

VIENNA, Md. —State archaeologists are analyzing the oldest Maryland-built shipwreck found on the lower Eastern Shore.

E.E. Cummings is quoted, "Whatever we lose, it's always ourselves we find in the sea." In the historic, tiny town of Vienna, Dorchester County, Maryland's former self has been found buried in sediment and has come to the surface to answer long-held questions.

"The day you find a shipwreck in Maryland waters is a momentous occasion. It doesn't get much better than this," said Julie Schablitsky, chief archaeologist with the State Highway Administration.

On the other side of Maryland's shore, scientists have made a home for an 18th-century shipwreck in an above-ground swimming pool in St. Leonard, Calvert County.

The husband-and-wife team of Schablitsky and Navy underwater archaeologist Bob Neyland has been studying the structure all summer since it was found during repair work under the U.S. Route 50 bridge in Vienna.

More

Why is Everyone Freaking Out About September 2015?

Next two months could be looked back on for decades to come

With the global economic meltdown already in full swing, the months of September and October 2015 could be looked back on in years to come as the most tumultuous in generations.

Here’s what they’re NOT telling you about how this came about.

More

While on Vacation, Obama Criticizes Congress for Taking Vacation

President Obama returned from a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard on Sunday, but not before criticizing members of Congress for taking their own recess.

During President Obama’s weekly address released on Saturday, the president chastised Congress: “Unfortunately, Congress left town for five full weeks – and they left behind a stack of unfinished business.”

“For the first time ever, Congress failed to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank. That left thousands of business owners and their employees at a serious disadvantage compared to their competitors overseas,” Obama said.

More

The best way to destroy the Capitalist System

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

...Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
-- John Maynard Keynes
(1883-1946) British economist

The Sudden Market Plunge

Are you prepared for further turmoil?

The global deflationary wave we have been tracking since last fall is picking up steam. This is the natural and unavoidable aftereffect of a global liquidity bubble brought to you courtesy of the world’s main central banks. What goes up must come down — and that’s especially true for the world’s many poorly-constructed financial bubbles, built out of nothing more than gauzy narratives and inflated with hopium.

What this means is that the traditional summer lull in financial markets has turned August into an unusually active and interesting month. August, it appears, is the new October.

Markets are quite possibly in crash mode right now, although events are unfolding so quickly – currency spikes, equity sell offs, emerging market routs and dislocations, and commodity declines – that it’s hard to tell for sure. However, that’s usually the case right before and during big market declines.

More

NRP Blotter 8-25-15

Worcester County

On August 5, 2015, Maryland Natural Resources Police officers received a report of a theft that had occurred in Worcester County at the Ocean City Fishing Center during the White Marlin Open tournament.

After public release and distribution of a flyer that included a photo of the suspect’s vehicle, officers identified the owner of the vehicle, Dennis J. Tronosky, Sr.

Upon further investigation and interview, a search warrant was secured for Tronosky’s residence and vehicle. After concluding interviews, charges were sought and placed against him for theft from vessels docked at the fishing center. Total estimated value of the stolen fishing equipment was $5,600.

Navy will use solar energy for 14 Navy and Marine installations

The Navy has signed on to have a 210 megawatt solar facility built at its Naval Air Station North Island, California, making it the biggest purchase of renewable energy by a federal entity, according to an Aug. 20 Navy statement.

In May 2014, the Navy and Western Area Power Administration, a division of the Environmental Protection Agency, signed an interagency agreement that allowed Western to issue a request for proposal to construct a solar power facility at the base, the statement says.

Western selected Sempra U.S. Gas & Power to install its Mesquite Solar 3 project. It will include more than 650,000 photovoltaic panels that the Navy says will provide a third of the energy that is needed to power 14 Navy and Marine Corps installations.

Construction of Mesquite Solar 3 will begin in August and Sempra expects the project to be complete by the end of 2016.

More

Bakers’ Surprise ‘Love’ Cakes Spark a Big Response From Gay Rights Groups Who Received Them

Gay rights organizations are responding in a variety of ways after Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of the Sweetcakes by Melissa bakery, sent cakes and letters out to numerous LBGT groups in an effort to deliver what the Kleins contend was a powerful message about faith and freedom.

As previously reported, the Kleins, who were ordered by Oregon state officials last month to pay $135,000 in damages after they declined to make a lesbian wedding cake, shipped the care package out last week along with gift cards and copies of “Audacity,” evangelist Ray Comfort’s controversial film about homosexuality.

From immensely skeptical to very thankful, recipients’ responses have run the gamut from negative to positive.

“This seems to a semi-clever publicity stunt to promote an independent film,” Jim Key, chief marketing officer of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, told TheBlaze. “I hope the cake is better than the movie’s reviews.”

More

Packing heat in Detroit: Motown residents answer police chief's call to arms

Detroit resident Darrell Standberry doesn't navigate streets of the Motor City without his licensed handgun, and it already has saved his life once.

“I never leave home without my weapon,” he said. “You never know when or what you’ll encounter.”

It was 2011, when Standberry stopped at a gas station on Six Mile Road after attending his son’s football practice. After filling up the tank of his SUV, he left the car running and went inside to pay, only to spot a man jumping in behind the wheel.

“I went back over and told him to get out of my car," said Standberry, 46, aformer bar owner who is now a college student. "He told me to get the hell out of there and drove off.”

More

24 Heroin Dealers Indicted In Annapolis


The Annapolis Police Department announces the indictments of twenty-four Annapolis heroin dealers. The Annapolis Heroin Initiative spanned more than six months and involved Annapolis detectives working undercover to make controlled purchases from drug dealers.

The Annapolis Police Department’s Drug Enforcement Unit made 50 controlled buys in different areas around the City of Annapolis, including twelve in and around Newtowne Drive. Six guns were also seized from the Woodside Gardens community on Newtowne Drive. The indictments, resulting from these buys, will disrupt these illegal drug trafficking groups in Annapolis.

Those indicted are identified as:
Jestin Elliott, 23, of Annapolis
Keddrick Green, 18, of Annapolis
Onjay Johnson, 19, of Laurel
Isiah Naylor, 19, of Glen Burnie
Richard Naylor, 22, of Glen Burnie
Michelle Neal, 23, of Annapolis
Jaron Rhodes, 21, of Annapolis
Donovan Robinson, 20, of Annapolis
Jonathan Scott, 49, of Annapolis
Leeron Shaw, 26, of Annapolis
Kedrick Tooles, 26, of Severn
Sheldon Wells, 25, of Annapolis
Keo Williams, 18, of Annapolis

Eleven others were indicted and their names will be released in the coming days.

Douglas announces bid for Senate

BLADENSBURG, Md. (AP) — A former George W. Bush administration defense department appointee from Bladensburg is running for Senate in Maryland.

Richard Douglas announced Monday that he will seek the Republican nomination in the race to succeed Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who announced in March that she would not seek re-election. The Navy veteran’s 2012 bid for Senate was unsuccessful.

Douglas says Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s victory set the stage for improvements for American workers, but moving ahead “requires a new team on Capitol Hill.”

More

Cruz: Enforcing Current Laws More Important Than 14th Amendment Debate

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a GOP presidential candidate, says he sees good arguments on both sides of the current debate on the 14th Amendment and "anchor babies," but said a much quicker resolution to the nation's immigration problem would be to enforce current laws.

"There's a good faith argument on both sides," he said Sunday on "Face the Nation." "We should pursue whichever one is effective. But as policy matter, we should change the law."

America is facing a "crisis" over illegal immigration, said Cruz, who has proposed a law to stop visa overstays as well as more National Guard members patrolling the border.

More

RENTERS' TAX CREDIT DEADLINE APPROACHING

The Maryland Renter's Tax Credit program's deadline to apply is less than two weeks away. Qualified renters can receive up to $750 in tax credits.

In order to qualify for the program, renters must be:
  • Age 60 or over, or 100% disabled.
  • Legally responsible for the rent.
  • Or, a surviving spouse of one who otherwise would have been eligible.

A resident under the age 60 who has at least one dependent under the age of 18 living with them, and has not received federal or state housing subsidies, does not reside in public housing, and the combined income of all residents of the home is below the allowable guidelines during the year they apply for the credit, could also potentially be eligible.

The deadline to apply for the 2015 credit is September 1 . Waiting until the last minute is not recommended.