Gordon Brown not a fan of “bigoted women,” winning elections

She’s just a sort of bigoted woman who says she used to be Labour.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown • Regarding a woman she met when he was out with the commoners today. Eight days before a major election. Too bad for him, because he was wearing a mic when he said it. Nick Clegg’s looking like a more viable option by the day, while Labour’s looking like a major fail. source

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This isn’t a Madame Tussauds wax figure. No, this guy is actually dead, he’s been embalmed, and he’s sitting on a motorcycle (which he was given by his uncle) at his wake. The deceased, David Morales Colón, was recently killed in a shooting at the far-too-sad age of 22. It’s the way he probably wants to be remembered. When we die, we want to be embalmed sitting at a coffee shop, typing on a MacBook. Less fun, but more accurate. (Thanks @putneydm) source

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$48
million decrease in AOL’s profit
between this quarter and the
same quarter a year ago
4.6
million number of people who STILL subscribe to AOL’s legacy service after all these years source

» Why the cruddy profits? It’s worth keeping in mind that AOL is a different company than it was a year ago. The company, fresh after leaving the disastrous merger with Time Warner which hurt both companies, is in the midst of making a big push into content, away from its core subscription business. (Disclosure: We freelance for AOL News occasionally.) Even considering that, their profit picture is significantly lower than expected – instead of the analyst-expected 70 cents per share, they could only muster 39 cents per share. Part of this is due to the quickly-falling legacy subscriber base and part of it is due to continuing advertising declines.

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In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth. … The whole time, I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,’ over and over and over again.
Former First Lady Laura Bush • Regarding the deadly crash which happened when she was 17 and living in Midland, Tx. She wrote about it in her new book, “Spoken From the Heart.” The 1963 crash, which happened when she and a friend were rushing to a drive-in theater, took the life of a star athlete at her school, Mike Douglas. Douglas was driving a Corvair, the car her husband’s future third-party presidential opponent, Ralph Nader, made the subject of “Unsafe at Any Speed.” Bush also notes that many things made the intersection a fairly unsafe one – including a small stop sign, which Bush ran, and a pitch-black road with a dangerous intersection. Still though, harrowing experience for the First Lady to go through, and probably one that had a deep effect on the rest of her life. source

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After much criticism, the insurer will back off of canceling policies after on May 1. After a Reuters feature put pressure on the massive insurer by noting many patients were getting their policies canceled almost immediately after getting breast cancer, Democrats put lots of pressure on them to change the policy. They would have had to change it anyway due to the new health care law, but the Democrats got them to change it early. The company claims “there have been a lot of misrepresentations and inaccuracies in recent days,” but the decision would help bring clarity to the company’s stance. Good move. source

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28 Apr 2010 10:59