Smartie the Seal Finds Shelter from Storm on Car Dashboard

This seal is one smart pup! Ironically, this adorable creature is named Smartie, and he’s making headlines for finding shelter from a Scotland storm, PEOPLE reports.

Apparently, Smartie was found wandering the Dumfries, Scotland streets near the Cairnryan ferry terminal area. Staff members tried to return the 6-month-old to the water, but he wasn’t having it.

So, an employee took Smartie’s safety upon himself and placed him in his car trunk. This way the seal would stay safe and contained until animal rescuers arrived. (We hope it was a spacious trunk…)
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NEGATIVE GROWTH: ECONOMY TANKS IN FOURTH QUARTER

Yesterday, Breitbart News reported that consumer confidence had dropped to its lowest level in almost two years. Much of the media spun the number as the result of a payroll tax increase that hit millions who were repeatedly told by Obama that only the rich would see their taxes increase. Surprise! But the spin didn't explain why consumer confidence had steadily dropped during the months prior. Well, now we know: The American economy has taken a nosedive.

For the first time in over three years, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product shrank. Between October and December of 2012, the GDP had a negative growth of 0.1. And let's remember that this is the same quarter where we saw the media go into hyper-drive to spin Obama's anemic job and GDP growth into a repeat of the Roaring Twenties.

The problem with the American economy is that Obama and his media can't fool it. Happy talk and spin and distractions about contraception don’t create jobs or growth. You might be able to fool legions of people into voting a certain way, but you can't fool them into spending and hiring and investing.
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SOCIAL DECAY+ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION+POVERTY=?

It’s a war out there folks. More people are dying in Chicago every day than are dying in Afghanistan (six people murdered this last Saturday). And they want to take away our means of protecting ourselves.

America’s inner cities are war zones. The democratic governments running these inner city plantation hellholes are running out of other people’s money, and can’t afford enough police to keep order. This happening all over the U.S. It’s so bad, army trauma doctors are training in real war zones (American inner cities) before they go overseas.

Maybe we can all chip in and get admin’s auto bullet-proofed. There is still time to get out of the cities. Don’t be a victim, be prepared!

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Martin O'Malley Tells His Own Story

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who spent 2012 as a top White House surrogate telling an upbeat story about President Barack Obama’s record, has turned his attention to pushing a different story: his own.

In public speeches and private remarks, O’Malley has begun to lay out a more assertive case for himself as a national leader in the Democratic Party, a narrative anchored in his Maryland record and in the state’s performance during a deep national recession.

While O’Malley has done nothing to discourage widespread speculation that he’s very seriously eyeing a 2016 presidential run, he faces long odds and a Rubik’s Cube of political complications — starting with the prospect of a potentially field-clearing bid by either outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Vice President Joe Biden.
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Cops Busted For Racing Cars To Donut Shop

New Plan To Increase Ways To Get To The Water In Chesapeake Bay Watershed

A new Chesapeake Bay watershed access plan calls for more ways to get to the water.

The National Park Service and the six bay watershed states released the plan Wednesday. The plan recommends expanding places where visitors can get to the water by more than 20 percent.

Plan authors found more than 1,000 sites where people can launch boats, fish, swim and view the bay and its tributaries. But they also found many areas with little or no access. Those include nearly 60 miles of the south side of the tidal James River in Virginia. Stretches of the Rappahannock, Potomac, Susquehanna and Nanticoke rivers also had limited or no access. 
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When Solar Becomes Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels

Solar power has been getting cheaper and cheaper:

Current estimates suggest that solar might be as cheap as coal by the end of the decade, and half the cost of coal by the end of the next decade:
If the trend continues for another 8-10 years, which seems increasingly likely, solar will be as cheap as coal with the added benefit of zero carbon emissions. If the cost continues to fall over the next 20 years, solar costs will be half that of coal. These predictions may in fact be too conservative given that First Solar have reported internal production costs of 75 cents (46 pence) per watt with an expectation of 50 cents (31 pence) per watt by 2016.

When applied to electricity prices this predicts that solar generated electricity in the US will descend to a level of 12 cents (7 pence) per kilowatt hour by 2020, possibly even 2015 for the sunniest parts of America.

What does that mean? Cheap, decentralised, plentiful, sustainable energy production. This would be a massive relief to global markets that have been squeezed in recent years by the rising cost of oil extraction, which has been passed onto consumers. Falling energy prices — all else being equal — mean more disposable income to save and invest, or to spend.

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Texas Woman’s Execution Halted; DA Won’t Appeal

The first woman scheduled to be executed in the U.S. since 2010 won a reprieve Tuesday, hours before she was scheduled to be taken to the Texas death chamber.

State District Judge Larry Mitchell, in Dallas, rescheduled Kimberly McCarthy’s punishment for April 3 so lawyers for the former nursing home therapist could have more time to pursue an appeal focused on whether her predominantly white jury was improperly selected on the basis of race. McCarthy is black.

Dallas County prosecutors, who initially contested the motion to reschedule, chose to not appeal the ruling.
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George Zimmerman's Attorney Asks Judge For Trial Delay

George Zimmerman's defense attorney Mark O'Mara filed a motion in his second-degree murder case on Wednesday, asking a judge to delay his trial in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, currently set for June.

The basis for the new motion is a series of issues and delays in gathering evidence and conducting depositions, and the defense filing lays much of the blame for the delay at the state's feet. Among O'Mara's arguments:

•The state delayed substantially in providing the defense a quality, color photo of George Zimmerman's facial injuries taken at the shooting scene. Prosecutors initially provided a black-and-white photocopy in May, O'Mara says, then a color photocopy in August and finally a digital copy in October, but only after repeated requests and a judge's direction.
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OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker Finds Great Whites

If you are ever searching for a great white shark, look no further than the OCEARCH Global Shark Tracker, which provides the location of all the tagged great white sharks in the world. The sharks have been tagged with a tracker that communicates with research satellites, telling scientists the shark's location.
Great white sharks live throughout the oceans of the world, anywhere the water is between 54 and 75 degrees. They aren't uncommon off the coast of the U.S.

The researchers have posted all the GPS data from the sharks they track online, where you can see the latest blip from the trackers on a map, and dive into any individual shark's previous blips, which indicate where they have been in the past.

From this, we can see there's a great white shark named Mary Lee that's been swimming up and down the East Coast since September. She is currently off the coast of New Jersey. Mary Lee is a 16-foot-long female Great White shark weighing almost 3500 pounds. She was first tagged in Cape Cod on 17 September, and the researchers have been tracking her ever since. Here's where she's been since then:

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‘UNPATRIOTIC’? ARABIC PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE RECITATION AT COLO. HIGH SCHOOL SPARKS CONTROVERSY

Controversy is brewing in Fort Collins, Colo., after a Rocky Mountain High School decided to allow a multicultural student group to recite the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker in Arabic, among other languages. The situation landed Principal Tom Lopez in hot water, with a slew of angry statements and threats being phoned into the school.

Lopez, citing an extremely diverse school body, explained that he was approached by the student-led Cultural Arms Club and asked whether pupils could recite the Pledge in languages other than English. French, Spanish and Arabic were some of the options that were chosen, with the school agreeing to allow students to read the Pledge in these tongues during morning announcements.
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Biggest Car Insurers Charge Low-Income Drivers More, Group Says

A study from a consumer group found that the largest auto insurers charge “discriminatory” higher premiums to safe drivers than those who cause accidents, mainly harming low- and moderate-income drivers.

The Consumer Federation of America released its third report studying auto insurance premiums, studying policies in 12 cities using the websites of the five largest car insurers: State Farm, Allstate, GEICO, Farmers and Progressive.

Those insurers comprise over half the private car insurance market, according to CFA.
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Behind The Scenes: Speech Prep

What a great speech prep session we just finished! Governor O’Malley is hard at work putting the finishing touches on this State of the State. It’s gonna to be great. I thought I’d share with you a sneak preview…
The Governor plans to tell the story of how we came together over these past few difficult years. Marylanders are doing some really fantastic things, and the Governor will share a few of their stories. He will also tell our shared story. It’s a story about a people who didn’t just throw their hands up in the air when times got tough. Instead we came together and made tough choices so that we’d come out of this recession stronger – choices we made both around our own kitchen tables and through the common platform of our government.

Did these choices work? Spoiler alert: We’re #1 in education, #1 in innovation and #1 in regional jobs recovery. Tune in Wednesday to hear the Governor’s take on what choices we can make together to keep creating jobs, expanding opportunity, and strengthening Maryland’s middle class. Wednesday. Noon. Hope you’ll tune in! And follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #MDSOTS

Army Major Super Bowl-Bound During 2-Week Leave

A lot of Ravens fans are heading to New Orleans for the Super Bowl this weekend, but for one Mount Airy couple, it's been a long and unusual journey to get there.

Army Maj. Melissa Ridgely-Covolesky and her husband, Lt. Col. David Covolesky, are some of the biggest Ravens fans around. They're season ticket holders who are making the trek to the Super Bowl.

But Ridgely-Covolesky might be the fan traveling the farthest. She was deployed to Afghanistan in June and made it back home to Mount Airy just in time.
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A Letter From The Special Forces Community Concerning The Second Amendment

Protecting the Second Amendment – Why all Americans Should Be Concerned

We are current or former Army Reserve, National Guard, and active duty US Army Special Forces soldiers (Green Berets). We have all taken an oath to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.…” The Constitution of the United States is without a doubt the single greatest document in the history of mankind, codifying the fundamental principle of governmental power and authority being derived from and granted through the consent of the governed. Our Constitution established a system of governance that preserves, protects, and holds sacrosanct the individual rights and primacy of the governed as well as providing for the explicit protection of the governed from governmental tyranny and/or oppression. We have witnessed the insidious and iniquitous effects of tyranny and oppression on people all over the world. We and our forebears have embodied and personified our organizational motto, De Oppresso Liber [To Free the Oppressed], for more than a half century as we have fought, shed blood, and died in the pursuit of freedom for the oppressed.

Like you, we are also loving and caring fathers and grandfathers. Like you, we have been stunned, horrified, and angered by the tragedies of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Fort Hood, and Sandy Hook; and like you, we are searching for solutions to the problem of gun-related crimes in our society. Many of us are educators in our second careers and have a special interest to find a solution to this problem. However, unlike much of the current vox populi reactions to this tragedy, we offer a different perspective.
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LBJ WAS AN ACTUAL NITWIT

Journalist Bill Moyers, who worked as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, shared memories in a column last year about how his old boss thought about our entitlement programs.

It was under Johnson, who championed the “Great Society” in the 1960s, that a good portion of the runaway government spending we are trying to get under control today originated.

Johnson signed into law Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty programs, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Moyers recounted that for Johnson, Social Security and Medicare “were about a lot more than economics.”

He recalls a time when the Johnson administration was supporting retroactive increases in Social Security payments. Moyers said he argued for the increases as economic stimulus. But Johnson called him and said:

“My inclination would be … that it ought be retroactive as far back as you can get it … because none of them ever get enough. That they are entitled to it. That’s an obligation of ours. It’s just like your mother writing you and saying she wants $20, and I always sent mine $100 when she did. I always did it because I thought she was entitled to it. … We do know that it affects the economy. But that’s not the basis to go to the Hill, or the justification. We’ve got to say that by God you can’t treat grandma this way. She’s entitled to it and we promised it to her.”

I don’t think we could have a clearer picture of Johnson’s muddled thinking about his job and the role of government, which contributed so much to the problems we have today.

Johnson’s words sound so wonderfully compassionate. But let’s get things in perspective.

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GOVERNOR MARTIN O’MALLEY HIGHLIGHTS “BETTER CHOICES, BETTER RESULTS” IN 2013 STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS

ANNAPOLIS, MD (January 30, 2013) – Governor Martin O’Malley today delivered his seventh State of the State address before members of the Maryland General Assembly, invited guests, and the citizens of Maryland. In his address, Governor O’Malley focused on the better choices made to achieve better results for our job creation, Maryland schools, and a strong and growing middle class. The Governor highlighted the tough decisions made in the midst of a national recession that enabled Maryland to protect priorities while creating jobs and expanding opportunity.

Tough, Fiscally Responsible Choices

We constrained budget growth and cut the size of government: We cut more than any administration in Maryland history; there are fewer executive branch employees now than there were in 2007; on a per capita basis, there are fewer executive branch employees than at any time since 1973; and we’ve constrained growth more than any administration in modern Maryland history.
We instituted reforms: We reformed hundreds of pages of regulations; streamlined permitting; fast-tracked projects that create jobs; eliminated paperwork and waste in State government; advanced public-private partnerships; and used smart maps to target our resources.
We made tough choices: While other states tried to cut their way to prosperity, we used a balanced approach. We made better choices that included new revenue to bolster schools.
Today, we’re on the verge of having closed the structural deficit, we’ve protected our AAA bond rating - certified by all three ratings agencies - and we’ve strengthened our Rainy Day Fund.

While Being Fiscally Responsible, We Still Achieved Results

We’ve made our schools better: We have the #1 schools in the nation for the 5th straight year; record student achievement; record high school graduation rates; narrower achievement gaps between white and non-white students; the nation’s best Advanced Placement scores; and the highest participation rate in AP science, technology, engineering, and math exams in our state’s history.
We’ve kept college affordable: Since 2007, we’ve done a better job than any state in the nation in holding down the cost of college tuition.
We’ve helped businesses create jobs: The U.S. Chamber ranks us as #1 state in the nation for entrepreneurship and innovation because of our high concentrations of high-tech activity and research; we’ve recovered a higher percentage of jobs after the national recession than any other state in our region; and we’ve exceeded our highest-in-the-nation goals for empowering women and minority-owned businesses by awarding state business.
We’ve helped keep families safe: We’ve driven down violent crime down nearly 25% since 2006, and even in light of population growth, incidents of violent crime are below where they were in 1977.
We are improving sustainability: We have made the Chesapeake Bay healthier; rescued the Blue Crab; restored our Native Oyster; and signed up more farmers than ever before to plant cover crops.
“As we emerge from the toughest of economic times, the state of our State is strong and we are growing stronger,” said Governor O’Malley.

For the Governor’s complete remarks, as prepared for delivery, click here.

Alabama Police In Hostage Standoff With Suspect In Fatal School Bus Shooting, Kidnapping

The Alabama man police say shot and killed a school bus driver Tuesday in an attempt to kidnap a 6-year-old boy has been hunkered down for hours with the child in an underground bunker on his remote property, The Dothan Eagle, a local newspaper, reported.

An Alabama legislator says the boy has been able to receive medicine and watch TV.

State Rep. Steve Clouse said Wednesday he met with authorities and visited the family of the boy.

Clouse described the standoff as a "static situation" and "a waiting game."

The paper reported that neighbors in Midland City, which is in south Alabama, identified the suspect as Jimmy Lee Dykes, 65. Police have not officially released the suspect's identity.

Neighbors, however, say Dykes, a retired truck driver, is known as a menacing figure who once beat a dog to death with a lead pipe, threatened to shoot children for setting foot on his property and patrolled his yard at night with a flashlight and a shotgun.
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Mikulski Seeks Executive Order On Pay Equality

 

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski is calling on the Obama administration to prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss salaries -- a new twist on a key provision of the pay equality legislation the Maryland Democrat has sought for years.

In a letter to the White House on Tuesday, Mikulski argued that President Obama should sign an executive order baring contractors from firing employees who disclose their own pay or inquire about another employee's salary.

Mikulski has sponsored legislation, the Paycheck Fairness Act, that would put that prohibition in place for all employers. But the measure fell seven votes shy of the 60 needed to bring it to the Senate floor last year amid a charged presidential election in which women voters were courted by both Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney. 
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Frustrated Daily Times Viewer

After months of threatening to disallow me to view the Daily Times on line, they have finally done it at least to a degree. Will not allow me open the Opinion tab but still can view Obits, etc. Get much more from Sby News anyway Thanks Joe and good luck in the upcoming race. ps The Times did have a headline stating that the C of C was going to have a debate but it would not allow me to open the story.