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28 Apr 2010 10:05

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U.S.: Laura Bush on the deadly crash from her teenage days

  • 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
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Apr 2010 20:10

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U.S.: Two places where an economic boycott of Arizona would hurt

  • baseball The state’s MLB team, the
    Arizona Diamondbacks, could face empty (or emptier) seats across the country thanks to a boycott.
  • tourism The Grand Canyon is a huge
    driver of tourism in the state;
    activist groups are telling people
    to stay away. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Apr 2010 09:55

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U.S.: The military’s top enemy, after the Taliban? PowerPoint

  • “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” The military has a problem with PowerPoint presentations taking over their lives, to the point where some top military officers refuse to use the program. If it sounds like an absurdly postmodern problem for a major military force to have, that’s because it is. Our military is becoming a “Dilbert” strip. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Apr 2010 21:38

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U.S.: We’re relying on robots to stop a huge oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico

  • 42k number of gallons of oil the leak is spewing out each freaking day
  • 5,000 number of feet underwater robots are working to fix the leak
  • three number of days from now the oil slick will hit the Louisiana shore source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Apr 2010 21:16

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Biz, U.S.: Our latest AOL News article tackles the SEC’s strange porn habit

  • Did some SEC employees have too much time on their hands? Last week, a lot of the buzz on the ‘net was around revelations that SEC staffers were caught looking at porn. But it’s not as bad as it looks. According to a study we found, 28 percent of people at your average cubicle farm (like this one) look at porn at work (we know, right?!). An internal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission nailed around one percent of their employees. And we think we know why they were so bored. Read our latest AOL News article for some insight. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Apr 2010 10:36

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U.S.: NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg’s heart lies in Bermuda

The country’s most powerful mayor hangs out in this secret offshore lair when he’s not running New York City or organizing his huge bank account. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

25 Apr 2010 20:56

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U.S., World: Japan complains loudly, again, about the U.S. military presence

  • 100,000 people protested the
    U.S. military presence on the
    island of Okinawa today
  • 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed
    in Japan, more than half at the Okinawa base source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

25 Apr 2010 20:35

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U.S.: Billy Graham, 91, convinces Obama to hang out with him

“Hey Billy, how you been? I’m what, the seventh, eighth president you’ve met in person? What, twelfth? Wow, you’ve been around the block.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

25 Apr 2010 11:36

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U.S.: Is the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court as “liberal” as they say it is?

  • Short answer: kinda. Longer answer: It used to be very liberal. With the controversy around Obama appointee Goodwin Liu taking shape, much of the bad-talking has been around the court he was recommended for. The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has a rep driven in part by its decision against using the phrase “under god,” and the Supreme Court’s consistent rulings against its decisions. But let’s throw some numbers at you guys and let you decide.
  • 88% the rate the Supreme Court has reversed its recent decisions between 2008 and 2009
  • 12k the number of cases the court heard last year – far higher than any of the other appeals courts
  • 58% of the court’s appointees came from Democratic presidencies, the highest rate of any appeals court
  • » Why does it lean liberal? Simply put, Jimmy Carter was in office during a period when this circuit court was expanded, and it allowed him to throw in 15 liberal-leaning judges. The geographic area is more liberal, too. But this has eased in recent years, due to the fact that those judges got old and Bush appointed seven of the 27 judges currently on the court. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Apr 2010 22:56

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Biz, U.S.: That offshore oil well under the sunken rig is leaking black stuff

  • 5,000
    feet     the distance the well is leaking below the surface
  • 1,000 barrels the amount of oil being lost each day; no, not the oil! source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
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