Salisbury News

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Government Shutdown?

A vote to avoid a government shutdown is likely today on Capitol Hill. As they head out of town for their August recess, members of Congress are nowhere near a budget agreement for fiscal 2013, which starts Oct. 1. So Democratic and Republican leaders are close to an agreement on a continuing resolution. That would keep the government operating at spending levels equal to this year's budget. The CR could be as long as six months. But members still have to deal with how to avoid sequestration, set to occur January 3. That debate is unlikely before the November elections.

Robbing Peter To Pay Paul

The Treasury inspector general is urging the IRS to collect money owed to it by other federal agencies. In one case, the Treasury Department itself never paid the IRS $26 million. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration looked at interagency work done by IRS. It found IRS officials didn't always get an accurate count on their overhead costs. So they didn't always charge other agencies the right amount. The IG says that runs against the IRS' own regulations. In 2011, the IRS took on 89 jobs for other agencies.

Tractor-trailer Dumps Cucumbers On Inner Loop

WASHINGTON - Call the Inner Loop of the Capital Beltway the fruit loop after a tractor-trailer accident dumped produce onto the highway and slowed traffic Tuesday morning.

Four vehicles collided around 8 a.m. in the westbound lanes of Interstate 495 just west of the Van Dorn Street exit.

The accident occurred when a Ford Fusion crashed into a tree-trimming truck while attempting to change lanes. The driver of the truck lost control and hit a tractor-trailer, which then ran off the left side of the road and eventually hit an SUV.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man faces federal drug charges for allegedly trying to smuggle more than 4 pounds of methamphetamine to Japan in what looked like dozens of Snickers bars.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Monday that 34-year-old Rogelio Mauricio Harris of Long Beach was arrested last week at Los Angeles International Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Japan.

Olympics Fans Find Ways to Circumvent NBC's Online Control

It took Jason Legate, a Walnut Creek, California-resident, all of 10 minutes to connect his computer to a London-based server and access BBC's coverage of the Olympics Saturday, thereby circumventing NBC's lock on coverage in the United States.

The 31-year-old system administrator said he has watched at least 12 hours of live BBC coverage (his favorite sport so far - judo) since he set up a virtual private network (VPN) connection to send all his Internet traffic to a server in London.

Legate is one of many viewers who, turned off by NBC's ironclad control of access to Olympics coverage in the United States and spotty online streaming, has resorted to a workaround--sometimes legal, sometimes not--to watch the Games when and how they want on feeds from countries such as the UK and Canada.

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THIEVES STEAL 15 METAL STORM GRATES IN CALIF. CITY

Officials in Union City, Calif., have dealt with theft before, but they’ve rarely had to deal with people stealing storm drain grates.

“People are coming out in the middle of the night, prying them up and are stealing them,” Cmdr. Ben Horner of the Union City Police told CBS San Francisco .

A total of 15 metal grates have been stolen in the past three weeks, according to city officials.

12-Year-Old Girl Steers to Safety After Grandpa Dies While Driving

Without so much as a driver’s license — or even a foot on the gas pedal — 12-year-old Miranda Bowman managed to drive off the road to safety after her grandfather died behind the wheel. Driving on a rural road in Burlington Township, N.J., last Tuesday, Paul Parker suffered what seemed to be heart failure.

According to family members, Bowman’s 63-year-old grandfather had been suffering from a heart condition. Bowman told reporters that her grandfather said he wasn’t feeling well: “[He] told me to just keep talking to him. Then he said he was scared, closed his eyes, and put his head on the glass. That’s when I knew he was dead.”

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Charlie Daniels: Hillary Would Have Been a Better President Than Obama

Country music star Charlie Daniels told The Daily Caller on Monday he thinks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Barack Obama, even though he’s hardly a fan of either.

Daniels said he thinks Obama has surrounded himself with an inner circle of policy and political novices, something that isn’t conducive to running a tight ship inside the White House.

The fiddler — famous for his “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” hit and others — added that while he’s no fan of the policies pushed by the former first lady and New York Democratic senator, he thinks Clinton would at least have run a productive White House.

Chaffetz Wants To Fire Federal Employees Who Owe Back Taxes

The House is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill that would fire federal employees for being tax deadbeats.

The bill, which is being proposed by second-term GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, also would keep tax scofflaws from getting hired by the federal government in the first place.

Federal civilian employees “draw their compensation and funds from the American taxpayers (so) they owe it to the taxpayers themselves to be compliant,” Chaffetz said. “Those that do not should be fired or lose funding.”

Twitter Suspends Journalist Who Was Critical of NBC

A journalist who has criticized NBC's coverage of the London Olympics has been suspended from Twitter after using the site to publish a network executive's private e-mail address and urge followers to message him.

Guy Adams, the Los Angeles correspondent for London's Independent newspaper, said he was tossed from the site Sunday after a series of posts, beginning Friday, that were critical of NBC's decision to delay airing the Games' Opening Ceremony and other events.

"The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel," read one post from Friday referring to the network, which has exclusive broadcast rights to the London Olympics in the United States. "Tell him what u think!" That post then listed Zenkel's e-mail address.

ACLU Wants To Know How License Plate Info Used

The American Civil Liberties Union is asking police agencies nationwide for details on how they store data captured by automatic license plate readers, which authorities say help fight crime and terrorism and are not used to stockpile information on all drivers.

A top concern, the ACLU says, is how long the location and movements of people are kept on file after cameras mounted on patrol cars or along roads on telephone poles and bridges photograph license plates. ACLU affiliates in 38 states and the District of Columbia have joined in asking for the information.

Obama Could Be Descended From African Slave

A team of genealogists has found evidence that President Barack Obama could be a descendent of an African slave _ but not through the lineage of his black father, the most likely route researchers had followed and exhausted.

The link, genealogists with Ancestry.com said Monday, is, in fact, through an examination of his white mother's family history.

"We were surprised and excited to make that connection," said Joseph Shumway, a member of the Utah-based Ancestry.com team.

IRAN PREPARING MAHDI'S SPECIAL FORCES

The Quds Forces, a special Iranian unit of thousands of operatives tasked with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution, are being told to step up preparations for terrorism for the coming of the last Islamic messiah and the destruction of the West.

Ali Saeedi, the Iranian supreme leader’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, emphasized during a Friday sermon in Tehran that the Islamic republic must directly confront America so that the necessary environment is created for the reappearance of Mahdi, the Shiite’s 12th imam, who will kill all infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all corners of the world.

Obama Will 'Evaluate' Bill Limiting Online Ammunition Sales, White House Says

White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday that President Barack Obama will "evaluate" new legislation that effectively bans online sales of gun ammunition, but he wouldn't say whether the president could support it.

During the daily White House briefing, Earnest told The Huffington Post that he didn't know if Obama had seen the bill filed Monday by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). The measure would significantly curb the ability of people to anonymously buy unlimited amounts of ammunition via the Internet or other types of mail orders. It would also require ammunition dealers to report bulk sales of bullets to law enforcement.

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MOB OF TEENS REPORTEDLY STEALS $3,000 WORTH OF ‘NUDIE’ JEANS FROM CHICAGO STORE

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been talking a lot about “Chicago values” recently, saying , for instance, that they are not in line with Chick-Fil-A because the company’s president believes in traditional marriage.

Earlier this month, in a heartfelt plea to clean up the city, Emanuel told the city’s “gang bangers” to “take [their] stuff to the alley“ and to ”stay away from the kids.”

“And it is about values,” Emaneul elaborated . “Who raised you? How were you raised? And I don‘t buy this case where people say they don’t have values. They do have values– they have the wrong values.”

Bernie Sanders Calls Federal Reserve "Socialism for the Rich" After $16 Trillion Secret Bail-Outs, Including Foreign Banks

After 89 Democrats in the House voted in a victory for bipartisanship for HR 459 to audit the Federal Reserve, some jaw-dropping numbers are emerging as a result of a partial audit conducted this year. It is no surprise that the news is dropping with a dull thud in the media. That's why you should get your news from the Internet and sites like this.

Senator Bernie Sanders at his official website reports:

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Despite the wording of the Sanders press release the audit was not "top-to-bottom," with many areas excluded. HR 459 would remedy this.

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Recidivism Rate For Illegal Immigrants Nearly 20 Percent, DHS Records Show, As Rep Says Lack Of Enforcement To Blame

Roughly one in five illegal immigrants arrested for a crime committed additional ones within three years of their release, according to a House Judiciary Committee report to be released Tuesday.

The findings are the result of the committee’s subpoena request for Department of Homeland Security records from October 2008 to July 2011.

The information was analyzed by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which also broke down the information for criminal immigrants -- legal immigrants who committed crimes and were arrested again over the three-year period.

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Science Proves What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

To a degree, yes.

Tough experiences do seem to make you tougher. People who had faced a moderate amount of adversity often coped better with problems than those who had a history of either serious problems or none at all:

Via APS:

Your parents were right: Hard experiences may indeed make you tough. Psychological scientists have found that, while going through many experiences like assault, hurricanes, and bereavement can be psychologically damaging, small amounts of trauma may help people develop resilience.

And:

Indeed, a lot of solid psychology research shows that having miserable life experiences is bad for you. Serious events, like the death of a child or parent, a natural disaster, being physically attacked, experiencing sexual abuse, or being forcibly separated from your family, can cause psychological problems. In fact, some research has suggested that the best way to go through life is having nothing ever happen to you. But not only is that unrealistic, it’s not necessarily healthy, Seery says.

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ACLU Lawyer Wants Chick-fil-A Supporters to Gorge on Transfats

If you support Chick-fil-A in the face of left-wing nutcase attacks over the restaurant chain’s support of traditional marriage, ACLU of Massachusetts Executive Director Carol Rose has some advice :

“Did you see that politicians Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are now trying to rally all homophobes to eat at Chick-fil-A? I’m thrilled. In fact, I encourage all bigots to load up on transfats and carbohydrates. Go ahead — eat your heart out on the “Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit” breakfast ! Mmmm.”

Presumably, her idea is to trigger heart attacks.

U.S. Says Afghans Abandoned Police Bases

WASHINGTON—Inspectors from a U.S. government watchdog agency discovered that several American-funded border police bases in Afghanistan have been largely abandoned or left unoccupied, raising questions about the coming hand-over of security duties to local forces.

Among other findings, inspectors found that one base, Lal Por 2, wasn't being used by Afghan border forces because it had no water supply, a report due out Monday states. A second, Nazyan, "may soon be uninhabitable" because of shoddy construction that caused sewage overflow.

All told, the new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found most of the facilities on three of the four bases that it inspected—each built to house 93 border police personnel—"were either unoccupied or weren't used for the intended purposes."

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