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Abdulrahman al-Saleh, director general of Dubai's department of finance, spooked investors with his comment on Dubai TV. He said: "Creditors need to take part of the responsibility for their decision to lend to the companies. They think Dubai World is part of the government, which is not correct."
Dubai World, which has run up debts of £36bn creating the emirate's "Palm Islands" and buying stakes in companies such as London Stock Exchange and department store Barneys, triggered a collapse in world stock markets last week when it said it would delay repaying its debts.
Banks which have loaned Dubai World money led the FTSE 100 index down 55 - or 1pc - to close at 5190.68 points. Bailed-out Lloyds and state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland slid 5.9pc and 4.4pc respectively. Barclays fell 1.85pc, Standard Chartered 2.4pc. Only HSBC edged 0.1pc higher.
Construction and engineering companies with links to the emirate also fell, with Balfour Beatty and WS Atkins losing 0.7pc and 1.9pc respectively.
Earlier, stock exchanges in Dubai and Abu Dhabi suffered record one-day losses on fears over debt defaults. Dubai's index sank 7.3pc, its biggest one-day fall since October last year. Abu Dhabi's Securities Exchange endured the largest one-day loss in its history as it ended the session down 8.3pc.
Jitters over the Dubai debt crisis weighed on other European bourses, with Paris's CAC 40 falling 1.1pc to 3,680.15 and Germany's Dax losing 1pc to finish at 5,685.61 points. The Dow Jones was trading down around 0.4pc at 10,270 when London closed.
Nakheel, the troubled "Palm Islands" developer that is part of Dubai World and at the heart of Dubai's debt crisis, today asked the exchanges to stop trading its bonds until it was in a position to provide further information about the restructuring exercise to which it is being forcefully submitted.
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates sought to reassure investors again yesterday when its central bank issued a statement promising to "stand behind" local and foreign banks operating in the country.
"Central Bank has issued a notice to the UAE banks and branches of foreign banks operating in the UAE, making available to them a special additional liquidity facility linked to their current accounts," it said. The facility would be at 50 points above the Emirates inter-bank offered rate.
The announcement calmed international fears about exposure to a new debt crisis from the problems afflicting Dubai World, a state-run holding company, and a consequent further credit crunch.
Earlier in Asia, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed 3.3pc, with banks and South Korean conglomerate Samsung, whose engineering arm is responsible for some of Dubai's prestige high-rises, both doing well.
Nakheel said it wanted the exchanges to halt trading on its three major sukuks, or Islamic bonds, including the $3.5bn (32.1bn) sukuk due in two weeks' time that is at the centre of the liquidity problems of Dubai World, its parent company.
"Following the announcement on Wednesday 25 November from the Government of Dubai, Nakheel has today asked for all three of their listed sukuks to be suspended until it is in a position to fully inform the market," it said in a statement to the exchange, Nasdaq Dubai.
Both emirates are rampant with speculation about terms and conditions for a bail-out of Dubai World, but negotiations seem to be continuing at a political level even as the chief restructuring officer, Aidan Birkett of Deloitte, starts going through the books.
At issue are not only unpaid debts but also a string of unfinished property developments across Dubai - and out into the sea.
Nakheel is fully owned by Dubai World and has no listing. Another subsidiary, DP World, though, the ports operator which bought P&O three years ago, fell 15pc to 36.6 cents, even though it has been excluded from the restructuring exercise.
Other big losers in Dubai were property companies. Emaar, another state-run firm, the largest developer in the UAE and the name behind the world's tallest building, Burj Dubai, fell 9.9pc to 3.75 dirhams.
Like DP World, its credit ratings were cut after the Dubai government statement on Wednesday, which said Dubai World was seeking a standstill on its debt repayments while it restructured.
National Bank of Abu Dhabi, which bought into a new $5bn bond issuance by the Dubai government's financial support fund on Wednesday, fell 9.7pc to 12.1 dirhams.


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Not even in the Super Training chapter? Honestly, if Kusaka is taking so much time to give out the Starters, he's gotta to be planning something, or may even be trying to mislead us into thinking X will get Harimaron and Y will get Keromatsu when he could be thinking something else.
Alternatively, he may be wanting to finish BW2 before deciding which Starter goes to who, and may not have given the Starters out yet to keep the possibilities open.
The Trimmian (Furfrou) chase in the games is in which city? How much cities until this? Because it seems obvious to me that Sana'll get Trimmian back at that point. Perhaps Fokko will also appear at that point.

subset: commoncrawl


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Regional Reviews: Connecticut & the Berkshires
Regional Reviews by Fred Sokol
The Violet Hour
Wilson Chin's set, granting a nearly panoramic view of a midtown Manhattan hotel front in 1919, feels enormous. The office windows of Arbiter House (publishing) are slanted and overly huge. John (Austin Lysy) has funding, from his father, to print just one book. One of the selections is a work written by a close college friend. That man, Denny (Brian Avers), desperately wishes to win the hand of blonde Rosamund (Heidi Armbruster) and will demonstrate his merit to the young woman's father with the publication. On the other hand, Jessie (Opal Alladin) presents her memoirs. She's a singer, a divaJohn is carrying on an affair with her. Later on, we see that Jesse is deeply troubled.
Pivotal to all that ensues is Gidger (Nat DeWolf) who, at first, seems to be a one-dimensional office worker stuck with mundane chores. As things develop, though, it is Gidger who brings word from the future via pages upon pages of printed matter. A strange machine (in silhouette at the door window) spews forth these discoveriesand accompanying implications. During the first portion of the play, Greenberg's presence and sequences are comedic and/or engaging. He races in with findings. For example, material from a late twentieth century finding informs these early twentieth century individuals that the word gay will take on new meaning years and years later.
This much is clear: the future holds events and occurrences which will be unsettling and tragic. The playwright's characters are young and hopeful but their optimistic dreams could remain unfulfilled. The characters are often animated and agitated. These eager, ardent men and women are set to launch careers and lives. They are, back to reality of this day, about to go to a playset in 1919.
Greenberg's The Violet Hour is (early on) somewhat convoluted and the exposition is lengthy. The yield, however, is significantly positive. The author is cerebral and innovative. Barry Edelstein, directing, gets it right as he pushes the action forward through crisp pacing.
Chin's set which looms above the audience is enveloping. Edelstein, urging the actors to utilize props, complements what some might construe to be a wordy script. Yes, it's fairly long but it is not tedious. Rather, the playwright strikes an intriguing balance within imaginative and cerebral modes. Chris Lee's lighting design demonstrates, as the second act begins, that this is a twilight/violet time of day.
You have to admire Greenberg's writing. Even if it takes a while to figure out the script's direction, the promise is intriguing. The central dramatic question involves John's choice of works for publication. If Gidger serves as catalyst for plot evolution, John drives the story forward. The tension within The Violet Hour builds by increments and reaches a crescendo near the play's conclusion. There is an implied tumultuous moment. To discover Greenberg's means of resolution, see the play. The true star of this play is its talented author.
The Violet Hour continues at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield, Massachusetts through August 2nd. For ticket information, please call (413) 236-8888.
- Fred Sokol


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Holidays and Holly Nights in Door County, WI
Nov 15, 2012, 18:48 ET from Door County Visitor Bureau
DOOR COUNTY, Wis., Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As the last leaves fall to the ground each autumn, Door County, Wisconsin, redecorates itself in classic holiday finery. It's a great time of year for a laid back visit to find the perfect one-of-a-kind gift and reconnect with friends or family – all before Santa Claus comes to town.
Door County offers a wide selection of holiday shopping opportunities throughout its quaint waterfront communities. Boutiques offer unique clothing lines, shops offer a variety of handcrafted items, specialty food stores offer locally made products and Door County wineries bottle up the fruits of their labor for your tasting enjoyment. Looking for a special piece of art? Studios and galleries provide unique gift-giving opportunities with their Door County inspired works, from paintings to pottery to music.
The readers of Midwest Living magazine selected Door County as the "Best Place to Find a Unique Gift," an honor the magazine called "not surprising, considering Door County's longstanding reputation as a shopper's paradise."
A variety of special events help set the stage for your memorable Door County holiday shopping trip. Weekend festivals, tree lighting ceremonies, holiday home tours, holiday art fairs and Wisconsin's only Thanksgiving Day parade are some scheduled event highlights in November and December.
Exceptional value Holidays and Holly Nights hotel packages are available through December 16, 2012. All packages include lodging, dining and special extras. Book now and receive a $25 Door County Gift Certificate upon check-in, redeemable at hundreds of Door County shops and restaurants. Visit DoorCounty.com to view available packages and view a special winter shopping and activity guide.
Have a Door County lover on your gift list this year? Door County gift certificates are the perfect gift and are available in denominations of $10, $25 and $50. They can be used at hundreds of shops, restaurants, lodging, activities and attractions in Door County, Wisconsin, and may be purchased on-line at DoorCounty.com or by phone, 1-800-527-3529, through the Door County Visitor Bureau.
Do something special for yourself AND bring home something special from Door County for that special someone this holiday season.
For personal Door County holiday travel assistance, call 1-800-527-3529 or visit DoorCounty.com to plan your next trip.
Related Links:
Holidays and Holly Nights Information
SOURCE Door County Visitor Bureau


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Copyright Novtek, 2009. All rights reserved.


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Located in Kiyovu, Kigali, at walking distance for the city centre, Park Inn Hotel by Radisson Kigali is the latest entrant in Rwanda's fast-growing hotel industry – a colourful four-star-plus hotel warmly welcoming Rwandans and foreign business and leisure travellers alike.
The hotel's General Manager, Jarl Thomas Stene, explained to Hope Magazine how the hotel will be a great addition to the sector and what amenities it has to offer.
Hope Magazine: Can you introduce Park Inn by Radisson Kigali and tell us what it has to offer the market?
Stene: We are the new kid on the block in Kigali and we have 161 fantastic bedrooms, which include 34 superior rooms and four suites.
We have an outdoor swimming pool, a large gym with a professional instructor, a conference area that can host 400 delegates, with all the latest audio-visual equipment and breakout rooms, as well as a night club that is going to be a great addition to Rwanda's night life.
Our strategy is to offer a wide variety every day of the week that will see us create a standard for the hotel to not only cater for the in-house guests but also to the local community.
We believe that both international and local guests will love the Park Inn because of its design which is vibrant and colourful. Together with our service culture and values, we hope that the guests will have a new experience.
We also want to create a place where Rwandans want to come with their families and friends to socialize and have a good time.
Hope Magazine: One would say that the Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre, which is affiliated to Park Inn by Radisson, already has enough capacity to serve the market. How is Park Inn by Radisson going to be different, what will set you apart?
Stene: Radisson Blu and Park Inn by Radisson both belong to a hotel group called Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group, but they are different brands.
Park Inn is a four-star-plus brand that offers general services and serves a different market segment compared to Radisson Blu, which is five-star. But we complement each other in the market – Park Inn positions itself to receive corporate and leisure guests from all walks of life at lower rates.
We want to create a hotel that is for Rwandans and like other hotels in Kigali attract foreign businesspeople to the country.
Compared to other countries, the Rwandan hospitality industry is maybe not yet the strongest but I am very pleased to see the focus and fantastic work the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) is doing in making Kigali become a top MICE destination (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events).
I strongly believe with this focus and with RwandAir's new routes, Rwanda will attract a lot more business, not only for MICE but also corporate and leisure business. Due to this, I believe that there is need in Kigali for more international four- and five-star hotels such as Park Inn.
Hope Magazine: How are you going to work with other hotels and airlines to see that all of you benefit from the growing tourism business?
Stene: Globally, we work closely with other actors in the Market and as Rwandair starts flying to these destinations, it could be a perfect opportunity to work with both Rwandair and RDB to promote Kigali.
Who Is Thomas Stene
General Manager, Park Inn by Radisson Kigali
Thomas Stene, a Norwegian national, has over 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry. He started his career as a Meetings and Events Manager at the Radisson SAS Bodo Hotel, Norway in 1995.
In 1998 he moved to Clarion Admiral Hotel in Bergen Norway as Front Office Manager. Thomas rejoined the Rezidor Hotel Group in 2000, when he was appointed General Manager at the Radisson SAS Park Hotel, Haugesund, Norway.
Between 2004 & 2016 his career path has taken him to Azerbaijan, Russia, Prague and Jersey as a General Manager at different Radisson Blu & Park Inn by Radisson Hotels.
In 2016, he was appointed General Manager of the Park Inn by Radisson, Kigali, Rwanda, which is his most recent position.
Thomas, who is hard working, fair and a 'people person' open to the ideas of others, says his passion for traveling, exploring new places and meeting new people has influenced his career choice. Growing up he used to be fascinated by the stories his father used to bring back home from his travels.
"I always knew that I would like to pursue a career that could also take me around the world, so the hospitality industry was a natural choice. At one point I was considering to combine studying Economics with a foreign language which could give me an opportunity to have an international career, but in the end, I decided to go for the hospitality industry as I thought that would give me more options, and the fact I love to work with and for people."
Hope Magazine: The opening of the Park Inn by Radisson has obviously created new opportunities for suppliers and unemployed youth in the country. What kind of opportunities are there and how many jobs have you created for Rwandans?
Stene: I am very pleased to say that we have recruited about 160 mostly Rwandan staff and trained them. We worked very closely with the Akillah Institute to get them and are excited to see that these youth are very passionate about careers in the hospitality industry.
We will continue to provide them with a lot of corporate and professional training, and teach them our service culture, as we have done in the past month in the various outlets that they work in.
We also have a program called Women in Leadership where we focus on developing female managers so that we can have gender equality in management. Hopefully one day we shall have a Rwandan female general manager.
We also have a program called Responsible Business where we like to have local suppliers for all the products and services we need, and let them benefit from our environment. For example, we already work with Question Coffee which supplies us with very good quality coffee.
We also have the Soap for Hope program, in which we completely sterilize used soap from the hotel rooms and make new packaged soap which goes to the community.
Hope Magazine: Lastly, as the Rwandan hospitality sector is getting quite competitive, what will you do to get and stay on top?
Stene: I believe there is enough room for all of us. As I mentioned earlier, we are a colourful hotel and want to create happiness and memorable experiences; we hope that our service culture and the focus on guest experience will make us stand out.
We have a service culture called Adding Color to Life. We always ask ourselves the following questions:
• Why are we here for the guests?
• Who are we to the guests?
• How do we deliver?
• What in essence do we provide?
The answers to that is that first of all, we are here to deliver colourful moments and create a happy place to be. Secondly, we are 'happy makers.'
Thirdly, we always deliver with a friendly and positive attitude. And fourth, we offer a relaxed, comfortable and vibrant hotel ambience where you can be yourself.
We have also changed the way we think. Previously, we may have focused too much on processes and how we should do things rather than on what the desired guest experience should be.
In order to create a culture for our guests, we are using something called Reverse Thinking – a way of looking at how we interact with our guests. We want to put our guests first, so it makes sense that we take our desired guest experience and use it as the starting point for everything we do. Reverse Thinking requires us to take a look at both our organization and ourselves.
When we put our guests at the centre, we have to determine their desired experience.
There are two simple but important questions when thinking of what our desired guest experience should look like: what we want our guest to experience at the Park Inn by Radisson Kigali, and what we want them to say about us.
To create this culture, we have various training modules for all our staff where we go through all aspects of how we should recreate this culture. We discuss how important it is to connect, be tuned in, go the extra (s)mile and be positive.
We want staff to be engaged with our guests, be curious about them and have fun with them. It is also important that I, as a leader, together with my management team show recognition, coach, trust and inspire our colleagues.
We also encourage and allow our employees to make decisions without having to run them through their supervisors every time an issue comes up – we empower them by showing our trust in them. We strongly believe this will influence the guest experience.
So basically, our service philosophy is to put our guests at the centre and create a memorable and colourful experience for them.
We would like to be a hassle-free hotel with no frills. In addition, we will naturally offer a good night sleep, good meals and fun and vibrant experiences offered by our employees.
Also by working closely with our sister hotel, the Radisson Blu Hotel and Convention Center, hopefully we will be an attractive partner for the business and leisure market.
Read this article and more in issue n° 74 of Hope Magazine.


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|Rediff India Abroad Home | All the sections
Abdul Karim Telgi confesses
February 07, 2006 01:55 IST
The kingpin in the fake stamp paper scam Abdul Karim Telgi on Monday confessed before a chief judicial magistrate about his alleged role in a case where he is charged with selling fake stamp papers.
Telgi said he felt much relieved after the end of the marathon five-hour session.
Charged in 48 cases in the scam totaling over Rs 30,000 crore, Telgi has confessed his role for the first time since his last arrest in 2002.
Telgi appeared before CJM D W Modak 48 hours after he was asked to apply his mind and reflect on his decision to confess in the 1995 case.
Although his confession was behind closed doors, it assumes significance in the wake of Telgi telling the judge earlier that he wished to confess to expose powerful politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen and others involved in the scam.
Complete Coverage: The stamp of corruption


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1. Re: Why was McAfee installed without requesting my permission?Mike M Nov 20, 2013 11:36 AM (in response to OriHaruyuki)1 person found this helpful
There's an update link that installs it with no opt out. It's been reported months ago. It has also been suggested that Adblockers will hide the "opt out" on the download page as an ad, but I tested this morning and it made no difference if I disabled AdBlock or not.
You can download the Adobe Flash Player installers directly by right clicking one (or both) of the following links.
Flash Player for ActiveX (Internet Explorer)
Flash Player Plug-in (All other browsers)
I use those to avoid any bundled software.
2. Re: Why was McAfee installed without requesting my permission?OriHaruyuki Nov 20, 2013 11:45 AM (in response to Mike M)
Thanks for the links, I don't use adblock so it can't have been that, just really surprised there was no opt out or even a mention of it until I was told it was downloading.
3. Re: Why was McAfee installed without requesting my permission?XyrcesFenol Sep 3, 2014 1:03 AM (in response to Mike M)
This horrible behaviour still exist september 3, 2014 !!
I today got a request to update Flashplayer on my computer, Windows 7 64 bit.
It downloads a file and executing that DOES NOT GIVE ME ANY OPTION TO AVOID MCAFFEE!!
I did abort the installation, and I'm very thankfull that I have choosen to be notified of updates for me to install.
This is very bad, an extra layer of not wanted antivirus software can hurt both system stability and performance.
I do hope that this is an misstake that is adressed in timely manner for customers and notified to top management.
Kind regards
4. Re: Why was McAfee installed without requesting my permission?ejrutan3 Sep 3, 2014 2:59 PM (in response to XyrcesFenol)
The real question is why a reputable and respected software company like Adobe is involved in a cheap trick like sneaking software you probably don't want onto your machine unless your are hypervigilant every time you accept an update. They should be ashamed of themselves.


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Category: Faith Notes
What should I do now?
Remember the nameless, rich young leader who asked Jesus, "What should I do now?" It seems that he had reached the state of uneventful comfort. Life had settled into a pattern of predictability. He had his religious life in order, but inside there was a haunting suspicion that there could be more. There has got to be more to this "God" life, than just keeping all the rules.
If you are like me, you too have visited the state of uneventful comfort. It's easy for church life to shrink into a Sunday routine–a pattern of predictability.
Jesus had a simple answer to the young man's question: An offer–"Follow me!" Get rid of your security blanket and step into the adventure of a lifetime. High demand? Yes! The journey into mystery demands it. After all, who knows what God has in mind?
For years I saw only demand (the sacrifice, the cost of discipleship) in this passage, while missing the offer Jesus put on the table. If you just look at the demand, it can seem like a sentence, or punishment.
Hear this: focus on the offer, the faith adventure. It's a calling, a profound opportunity. Jesus is offering an internship with the Son of God.
Today, I'm convinced that many turn down the offer, not because of the demands, they simply don't want adventure. It's too unpredictable. They choose to stay in the comfort zone surrounded by ordinary expectations.
How about you? What have you chosen? Are you still surrounded by comfort and security, or have you chosen an Internship filled with mystery and danger?
In Wild Goose Chase, Mark Batterson shares a passage from the diary of Christopher Columbus:
On the edge of medieval maps, cartographers used to inscribe the Latin phrase "terra incognita." Naysayers and doomsayers believed that if you ventured too far into unknown territory, you would either fall of the edge of the flat earth or run into two-headed dragons, but that didn't stop a few brave souls from venturing into the uncharted waters.
Columbus was actually trying to find a westward route to the Indies, something many experts assumed was impossible. He was no saint. In his own diary, he confessed: "I am a most unworthy sinner." But Columbus also stated that it wasn't intelligence, or mathematics, or maps that made his voyage a success. Columbus credited the Holy Spirit with the idea. "It was the Lord who put it into my mind. (I could feel His hand upon me). The fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous inspiration from the Holy Scriptures."
God did it. It started with an idea that become a dream that become a mission that became an adventure that defined the man. What defines you? Comfort? Safety? Security? Keeping the rules? Accepting the offer?
Novelist Andre Gide observed, "People cannot discover new lands until they have the courage to lose sight of the shore." They have to have a time of unlearning to make them ready for adventure.
Send me an email: Tell me the most dangerous thing God has put in your path. What happened? How was your faith affected?
Are you caged inside the walls of church or limited by your assumptions? Are you ready to be dangerous for God? If Jesus was engaged in a one-on-one conversation with you, what would he want you to unlearn? "You've heard it said…, but I tell you…" Another way of asking, What assumptions and misguided beliefs are limiting God's plan for your next big risk?
Faith always questions the status quo. So, quit praying for safety and protection. Ask God for the courage to challenge assumptions, to get dangerous. Check out http://packingforlife.com


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By Joan Akello
Justine Kasule Lumumba, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) chief whip has said she was the ring leader of members of the ruling party causing chaos in parliament last week.
Lumumba said this while appearing before the parliamentary committee on rules, discipline and privileges that is investigating last week's fracas in parliament over the disagreement in the controversial clause 9 of the oil bill.
She says that she saw the parliament had turned rowdy without following any house procedure which left her with no other option but to command members from the ruling side to react.
On 27th Nov last week the house was adjourned prematurely when some MPs wanted to vote on the oil bill while opposition and a few NRM MPs wanted it discussed. Failure to agree on the best move led to chaos.
The speaker suspended parliament on Tuesday and asked the a committee to find out the individuals who could have sparked off the chaos .The chief whip told the committee she consulted the leader of government business that day for advice when parliament turned rowdy and she got no response thus leading her to act.
Lumumba however defended members of parliament who were sighted in the fracas saying that instead of punishing any member they should be cautioned.
She says that there have been several incidences where parliament has been caught in such a fracas but no one has ever been punished for such.
Last week five ministers led by Lumumba including the Attorney General Peter Nyombi, Jessica Alupo, Chrispus Kiyonga and Okello Oryem were thrown out of the rules, privileges and discipline committee of parliament after they refused to take oath.
Her response was also echoed by some opposition MPs who criticized speaker Rebecca Kadaga for failing to control the house.
The MPs said that there was no reason for suspending parliamentary sessions.
Rubaga South MP John Ken Lukyamuzi together with Aruu county MP Odonga Otto told the committee that what happened was inevitable given that the speaker did not follow the rules of procedure and did not make any efforts to calm the discontented voices.


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One of the most irritating traits in a restaurant server is a demeanor that projects a message of "I don't care" or "I can't be bothered to even pretend that I want to be here." Now, everybody has a bad day at some point, but when your job is customer service, when your role is to help paying patrons enjoy themselves, you're obligated to make more of an effort to cover up your mood than is, say, a long-haul trucker sitting in his cab all day by himself or a warehouseman shuttling boxes.
I'm even more annoyed when a lazy server tries to get me to commiserate with his or her mood by pleading incompetence, as happened the other week during an upscale restaurant meal with friends. (The name of the place doesn't matter.)
When our waitress brought over a complimentary little dish, which had been carried by another server from the kitchen to where she was standing, about 15 feet from us, she put the plates down and said, "This is beef and something else that I forgot while walking over here." A little later, on a subsequent course, she said, "Yeah, I totally don't know what this is either, but it looks like what you ordered, right?" The attitude had manifested itself early, when we asked for menus, a request that apparently struck her as an imposition: "Oh, I'll see if I can find some of those." When we asked for a wine list she said something like, "You're actually going to do the whole-bottle thing, not just glasses?"
Throughout her tone was blasé, very "Oh, whatever." It was as if she thought that by letting us know she didn't want to be waiting on us, she was somehow exempted from trying to be friendly or competent. She let another server handle most interactions with us; she took the avoidance to the point that, after pouring our next round of drinks right in front of us, she walked halfway down the room to give them to her colleague to walk back over to give to us.
A chef once told me a story about dining out and encountering a waiter with an attitude problem. About five minutes into service, the chef stopped the guy midsentence and said, "Look, I'm in this industry, I'm on vacation, and I'm really hoping have a wonderful meal, but you're ruining it already. If you can't be pleasant, I'd like to be served by somebody else." The waiter turned his attitude around and was left a substantial tip.
I've never tried that approach, but this experience put me closer to saying something next time. Have you ever told somebody in customer service to shape up?


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Seat belts: the law
3. If your vehicle doesn't have seat belts
If your vehicle doesn't have seat belts, for example it's a classic car, you aren't allowed to carry any children under 3 years old in it.
Children over 3 are only allowed to sit in the back seats.
These rules only apply if your vehicle was originally made without seat belts.


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Five Practices for Children Paperback
by Robert C. Schnase;
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Five Practices for Children
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Can children really understand and take on the five practices of Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity? The answer is a resounding, yes! Using the best-selling Five Practices of Fruitful Congregationsas its foundation, Five Practices for Children features five teaching sessions on each of the practices made engaging for children by educator Rita Hayes. Incorporating Five Practices for Children into the congregational program will truly make Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations a church-wide initiative. Each chapter outlines one of the practices and includes: a workshop for leaders; lesson planswith reproducibles to help preschool children, elementary children, and tweens take action; suggestions for families; and stories about children who practice Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity
Five Practices for Children by Robert C. Schnase was published by Abingdon Press in January 2011. The ISBN for Five Practices for Children is 9781426716423.
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Details for Five Practices for Children
|Author / Artist
|Robert C. Schnase
|Book Format
|Abingdon Press (January 2011)
|Number of Pages
|7 mm
|280 mm
|210 mm
|Product Code
|Page last updated
|12th February 2015


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Veteran safety Danieal Manning doesn't know how his return to the Texans will play out, but he admits he feels "grateful" to be able to return to the team and city that had been his home for the last three years.
The Texans had asked Manning to take a significant pay cut to stay with the team after last season, more than half of which he missed with a fractured fibula suffered against the St. Louis Rams on Oct. 13. When he declined, he got released, but he went to great lengths not to burn any bridges with the Texans, particularly general manager Rick Smith. So when things didn't work out with the Cincinnati Bengals this summer – Manning was cut over the weekend – Smith apparently had no problem re-signing him, albeit for significantly less money.
He's playing for less than $900,000 this season, whereas his original Texans contract called for $3.5 million.
"Rick kept his word," Manning said, expressing no bitterness at his changed financial fortunes. "He told me if an opportunity came, he'd bring me back. I was joking with the guys I just took a little vacation. I didn't want to practice in this heat."
Manning insists he hasn't lost a step because of his injury, although camp observers in Cincinnati might beg to differ.
"'I feel good," he said. "I was healthy after working with (the Bengals' trainers) and the training staff here. Those guys got me right. I healed up well. I'm stronger than ever."
Manning said he'd be willing to return kicks, which he did with considerable success during his years with the Chicago Bears. Coach Bill O'Brien has given the job to the incumbent, Keyshawn Martin. Manning had been one of the NFL's best when he was with the Bears, but O'Brien's predecessor, Gary Kubiak, was always reluctant to expose him to injury after he signed with the Texans as a free agent in 2011.
Manning said he was happy to be part of the return game in his first incarnation as a Texan, and that holds true now.
"Everything is still the same," he said.
"It's fun, man," said cornerback Johnathan Josepth, who joined the Texans' secondary at the same time as Manning, of his friend's return. "I've got him right back over in the corner in the locker room right beside me. It's a good opportunity to have him back. (He's) a proven player in this league. It's good for us to have him back."
Asked if Manning will struggle to learn Romeo Crennel's defense, Joseph replied: "I don't think so. He's been over here early in the morning the last couple days trying to pick up things to get himself ready."
Manning joked that his new/old teammates "thought they were seeing a ghost" when he reappeared on the practice field Tuesday morning, except this time wearing No. 27. Rookie Andre Hal inherited Manning's No. 38, and some cash might have to change hands for Manning to recover it. Hal gained not insignificant leverage by returning two interceptions for touchdowns during the preseason.
"We have to talk to Jaybird (director of equipment services Jay Brunetti) and the NFL (about a possible number change)," Manning said. "I didn't get to meet (Hal) the first day I got here. Now we've had a chance to talk, and he's willing to give it to me, but I really don't know yet. … For now, I'm 27. It's strange to see him running around and I'm looking around and thinking, 'I didn't do that.' "


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Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I thank my friend from Kentucky for being here. I wanted to let him know that I have enjoyed the day. It's been a wonderful challenge and great working with him. I thank my friend for all the good work we did today.
Today from 1 o'clock until close to 7 o'clock, we were debating the Cement Industry Relief Act, and I'm going to just rehash that a little bit.
Before I start, Mr. Speaker, I had a constituent who approached me about the fact that as we're here tonight, that you and I are in a relatively empty Chamber except for all these fine folks that are all here working on behalf of the American people and that accused me of trying to fool the American people into thinking this was a full room.
So I just wanted to set the record straight because he honestly didn't believe I would do it, that most evenings we are talking to our colleagues back in their offices and so forth who are keeping up with this on C-SPAN. This is often a very small group of folks who are in this Chamber. I'm not trying to fool anybody, and I was offended by the fact that he accused me of doing that. So I wanted to make the record clear as I started tonight that you and I are working here together.
So now that I've gotten that little pledge that I made to one of my constituents taken care of--I hope he was watching--I want to say that we've been talking for quite some time about the regulatory burden that's being placed on the American people and what that has to do with our economy, the fact that we may be approaching a double-dip recession, God forbid--but there's all indications that we could be--and the fact that we're losing jobs. We've got to, instead, stop losing jobs. We've got to save jobs and start creating jobs.
The truth is that the job creators of this world are, first and foremost, our small business people. We had a whole group of small business people who came up to hear the President's speech when he talked to us the other day. They sat right up in this section of the gallery, and later they talked to the press and others about what they thought was necessary for their individual small businesses to start to grow, to prosper, and to create jobs. It's a funny thing. I didn't hear from any of them--and there were about 12--that what we need is a government bailout, that what we need is a government stimulus.
What they said was, We need the government to quit throwing up roadblocks to us prospering in our businesses. They mentioned the fact that access to capital was difficult in this country because of regulations that had been issued under the Dodd-Frank Act. They mentioned the unknown about what's going to happen as the regulations are being developed for health care, for what we call the ObamaCare bill.
As those regulations are being developed, every day it seems like they hear something new that is going to be mandatory in health care. As mandatory regulations are put upon the insurance providers of health care, the prices go up. Then as many of these small business people who are diligently trying to keep their employees hired and their employees insured as the ongoing rulings by these regulators under the health care bill are coming to the forefront so people can know about them, they hear from their providers that the prices went up.
Some of them tell me that it's now getting to a point where the costs that are being put upon them--basically the cost of these regulations--are actually making them have to decide, Not only are we not going to be able to hire anybody, but we're not going to be able to keep everybody we've got because we're doubling and sometimes tripling our costs of providing health care for our employees. Quite honestly, with the number of employees we've got, we're just going to have to double up, and some people are going to have to carry bigger shifts. We have to do that. Where, in reality, the best business practice would be to hire somebody, the regulations keep us from doing that.
Then they tell us, With the unknown of the tax structure that we've got and the fact that what we now after 12 years are still calling the Bush tax cuts, which in reality is the tax plan that we're under now, there's a very good possibility that that tax plan might go away. Then the small business man and his accounting folks will have to look clear back to the era of Bill Clinton to see what the taxes were like then so they'll know what the taxes will be like if this body lets those things expire. They see that it's going to cause a tremendous amount of acceleration of their expenditures to pay extra taxes.
So they say, With that being unknown, with the final price tag for health care being unknown and then with learning that there are other agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and others that are going to impose additional regulations and additional rules on our small businesses, well, you know what, we can't afford to hire anybody. Even if we could make it better and make a more prosperous business than we have, because of the unknowns, we can't afford to do that.
Quite honestly, the President is going around all over the country. So far, he's been, I think, to every member of the leadership's district but mine, and he is telling people to tell the Congress to vote for his jobs bill, he calls it. I think it's the great American jobs bill or something to that effect. He's telling us the facts that he thinks we need to know about it; but that jobs bill has a lot more in it that is unknown, and the American people know that.
I mean, this isn't their first rodeo, as we say in Texas. They've been here before; and they know that when they've got a giant bill with giant expenditures and when all they're hearing are talking points on the television and the radio, they need somebody to look at that bill. Those of us who are here who are looking at it are seeing many, many onerous things that exist in that bill that are not being talked about.
The other night, Congressman Louie Gohmert was talking about some of the things he discovered as he was reading the bill. You haven't heard anyone talking about the things that he has discovered, but those things are important to the American people. It means their lives change both at home and in their businesses. American businessmen know that these unknowns are out there, and they are concerned about these unknowns. The unknown creates fear. It creates hesitation on behalf of the people who create jobs in this country.
The real jobs are the jobs that you get hired for and you make a living out of. It becomes a career job, and you are able to have a career and hopefully work in that industry until you decide it's not in your best interest to work there or until you're ready to retire with a retirement and a Social Security system that you can trust.
They say, But we're not sure we can trust that.
With a health care plan that you can trust. But we're not sure we can trust that.
We've got to put truth in front of the American people. We've got to get honest about what is in the bills that are out here. We have to be honest and stand up to the regulators and say, Wait a minute, what you're doing is going to cause people in my district back home and across this country to not be able to hold onto the jobs they've got.
This is the kind of thing that is causing a lot of the problems we have today.
Franklin Roosevelt said in the Great Depression: ``The only thing we have to fear is fear, itself.'' I think it's an argument that's still going on as to why private industry is fearful to hire new employees--because they don't know what the results of that hiring will be as far as the bottom line of their profit margins.
So I have been taking on the regulators and talking about various regulations and how colleagues in the House with me have bills and that we are taking up one a week until we get all of them before this Congress and, hopefully, get a vote and get them out of this House and over to the Senate.
Then we hope and pray and beg and cajole the Senators, maybe, to take up the bills. We have a stack of bills sitting over on Harry Reid's desk right now that have been passed that will make a difference in creating jobs in this country; but he announces when they get there that they're dead on arrival and that the Senate is not going to act. The Senate gets paid to act, but they seem to think, this year, they get paid not to act. That's an issue between the American people and the
Senate, but we have bills that are going over there. We will continue to send bills over to our colleagues in the Senate, and we are hopeful that as we approach the possibility of a double-dip recession that they'll open up a couple of those bills and take a look at them and see if they might help. I think they might.
Today, on the floor of this House, I've been involved, by permission of the chairman, in this debate on the cement regulations. We've been talking of and dealing with amendments since 1 o'clock. So I've been here a long time, but I kind of like it. I enjoyed the conversation with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and we had a good debate. All the amendments had been voted on and passed up until 7 o'clock, and the other amendments will be voted on tomorrow, then the final passage of this bill that is described right here, H.R. 2681.
What it does--probably is kind of hard to read--it provides employers with extended compliance period. What we've got is another form I want you to look at in this debate. I'll put it down there, and I'll hang it up there in a minute.
First, what this bill does, it provides additional time to comply with the Clean Air Act and the rules that they've set relative to the manufacture of Portland cement. It blocks current regulatory overreach by the authority. It gives the EPA at least 15 months to re-propose and finalize new and available rules that do not destroy jobs.
It affects the Cement MACT and two related rules. It's expected to affect approximately 100--this current set of rules is expected to affect 100 cement plants in America, has already caused suspension of a new $350 million cement plant proposed in, I believe, the State of Alabama, putting 1,500 construction jobs on hold.
That's what this proposed rule has already done. What this does is say time out, EPA, you're killing jobs.
So here's what we ask you to do. I want you to look at this rule and look at it in light of the fact that there's a possibility that 20 percent or more of these 100 cement plants will close. They will either close down and stop making Portland cement in the United States, or they will close down until they can open up overseas in an environment that is, quite honestly, not regulated at all. Not that our Americans don't want clean air, they do. But if they've got the clean air rules that are going to destroy them because of the cost, and the fact that they can't meet the standards and there aren't scrubbers to help them meet the standards, then they're going to say, well, if I'm going to stay in business I have got to go someplace where the regulations are not so fierce.
Now, why do I say they're fierce? Well, historically when we started off our environmental cleanup--which is a great thing, and every American's proud of it--I can remember that Europeans were held out as an example, just as they're being held out today as an example of green energy. They were held out as an example on water and air quality of how dedicated regimes could come up with solutions to solve the air and the water problem.
We have all seen the Sherlock Holmes movies of the smog and the fog in London, and it's gone. We've all heard of the pollution of the Rhine River, and it's not polluted anymore. And the Europeans were held out as having set the standards that the world needed to follow.
Well, let's look at the standards that the Europeans sets for the cement industry. The EU has just issued their final standards. The parameter for mercury, the U.S. standard in the EPA rule that we are dealing with in House bill 2681 is .01 percentage of mercury as an emission. The European standard, supposedly the state-of-the-art, is .05. Our standard is five times more restrictive than the European standard.
Hydrochloric acid, our standard is 3.83. The European standard is 10.
In particulate matter, our standard is 7.72, the particulate matter standard in Europe, in the EU, is 20.
So the people that we and the progressives in this House held up as the model for knowing how to clean up the atmosphere and clean up the water was the EU. They have issued rules approximately at the same time we have issued our rules, and you can see how much more stringent the rules we're placing on the industries of America versus the rules that are being placed on the European industries, our competitors.
I don't mean in any way to criticize the Europeans. I just find it questionable, if the Europeans say .05 and we've got .01, and we're dealing with mercury, which is one of the pollutants that are discussed in the issue of Portland cement factories, then it's five times more difficult for us to meet the standards.
At least from what the industry says, there is equipment available to meet the European standard. Our standard at this time doesn't have equipment available to meet it. So even if they wanted to jump in and do it in the 3-year time period they have to do it, they know they can't. They don't think they can meet that standard. They feel it's either going to be cost-prohibitive because of research and development to come up with solutions, or it's not going to be reachable at all, which could cause major fines. After they spent millions of dollars trying, they said, heck, we just can't do it.
At least 20 percent of the plants have already said, hey, we just can't do it. We're small, small businesses, we're not the giant conglomerates that people presume us to be, but most of our folks that own cement plants own anywhere from one to maybe five, some of them have a few more. But most of them are fairly small, a one-family or one-person operation. They're sitting there saying, we can't meet it, we're going to shut down; or we're going to look at the areas in the world where we can meet it, maybe Mexico--which does have some standards but nothing anywhere even near the standards of Europe--or maybe we'll go to China or to India where they basically have no standards, not that we want to have a plant like that. But if we put the plant that has got the filters on it right now that meets a current standard and take it over there, at least we won't be polluting the atmosphere too much more, and we'll at least be able to be in business.
What does that mean to us? Well, the President of the United States is going all over the country, and he's making speeches. And one of the things he says is don't the Republicans want to rebuild the infrastructure of this country? Don't they want to construct new schools and repair the old schools?
Well, have you ever looked at what kinds of materials we use to build schools in the current modern world? Of course, even in the old antique world you start with a foundation made out of, what, concrete, which is made with Portland cement. So, if the Portland cement is moving overseas, and we have less and less people that can meet the standard--and it could be more than 20 percent that moved--those are the ones who have told us they'll move.
But as a business practice they're going to look at it and see if they can make it work. Now why do I say it is going to be tough to work? Well let's look at it.
They're roughly a $6 billion industry. The estimated cost agreed upon--and the EPA doesn't dispute this--the estimated cost of making the changes to these plants, to meet the requirements set by the .01 on mercury, is $3.4 billion. So the whole industry makes $6 billion, and they have got to pay $3.4 billion to fix the problem.
Now, that is half, more than half of the income from the whole industry to fix these problems. When you think about that, that's a terrible, terrible hit for people who are in the business of making a profit. I don't think anybody in America thinks that people are supposed to work for no salary and no profit.
And, by the way, the jobs that we have in the cement industry are good-paying labor jobs. They make somewhere between something like $45,000 to $65,000 at the lower range and $65,000 to $85,000 or $90,000 in the upper range. That's a good-paying job.
Now, why would we want to ship that job out of the country so that America loses a job and somebody in India or China or Mexico gets a job? Why would we want to do that? That's a question we have to ask ourselves.
What our bill does, it says to the EPA, take another look at this and take into consideration the economic impact on our economy, take into consideration the impact on employment in our economy and the impact on lost jobs in our economy and the good you will do for the health care issues that are raised and have been raised all day by the Democratic Party in this Chamber.
Does anybody want sick people? Of course not. And to make that accusation against those of us who say these are onerous regulations I think is ridiculous. Nobody wants somebody to get sick, but is what we're doing going to keep them well? Let's examine that and see what we think.
I've shown this map before, but this is a very, very informative map. It tells you the percentage of mercury deposition that originates outside of the United States. And the red is somewhere between 78 and 100. So in the areas that are tinted red there, the mercury that's in those areas, between 100 percent and 78 percent of it comes from outside this country. It's because the prevailing winds blow the plume of mercury from the areas where there are no restrictions and no clean air, and that would basically be Communist China and India. They choose to live like that. That's their choice, but their pollution blows to our country.
The yellow is from 78 to, it looks like, 58. So between 78 percent and 58 percent of the areas marked in yellow are foreign pollution. The green is between 58 percent and 19 percent that's foreign pollution in that area. And the blue, there is very little blue, just a few dots up on the East Coast and a couple of dots in the Midwest, the blue is 19 to zero is foreign pollution.
So with that much mercury as the example coming from other sources, putting the kind of burden that this thing does on our industry, which has nothing to do with the pollution source from outside our country, and yet we're going to make our folks meet a standard of 0.01 when our other clean competitor, EU, is 0.05, so you can see why the industry would say, yeah, there's plenty of equipment to meet 0.05, but we don't think we can meet 0.01.
So what does this mean? Well, it means in Oregon where they have already cleaned up their plant, one plant has announced if these rules go into effect, after they've cleaned up their plant to meet the best standards available and being told it's not good enough, they're saying, We may have to close this plant. And people in Oregon are going to lose jobs that pay $80,000 to $100,000 a year.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, I'll tell you what's wrong with it. The regulators are not thinking about whose job is going to get lost.
And meanwhile, if we cleaned up our 100 plants, and this is the pollution that's coming in from foreign sources, then how in the world are we going to say we're protecting our children from disease? Well, if you're going to protect our children from disease, what about all of this pollution? We can't do anything about that. We need to, but we can't.
So sometimes when you get a job and you work for an agency, you become so wrapped up in trying to save the world from your standpoint that you don't think about who gets hurt in the process. But I think it's pretty clear who gets hurt is some people who have some pretty darn good jobs. And that 9 percent unemployment figure could rapidly go up just in this industry of good American labor folks who lose great-paying jobs. And who do they lose them to? Foreign operations.
And then you ask people: Why do our jobs keep going overseas? At least in the concrete industry, the cement industry, we know.
Also, as Mr. Obama travels the country, he loves to talk about we're going to rebuild infrastructure. We talked about that in the original stimulus bill, and how out of all those $600 billion or $700 billion, whatever it was we spent--I know it turned out to be around 50 or $60 billion that actually went to highways even though we were promised we were going to fix all of the highways and bridges, but let's just assume that they are going to fix the highways and bridges right now. If the cement industry is in trouble, then the concrete industry is going to be in trouble. And they have already had a 62 percent reduction in both those industries in the last 4 years because the economy has been bad and they're in the construction business.
So how are we going to build a bridge across the Mississippi River when we have to ship the products that we need to make our concrete over from China? Well, we'll do it. We'll figure out a way to transport that across the ocean. It can be done.
But remember when the President told us he found out that shovel-ready jobs in America weren't always shovel ready? Well, it's because something stood in between the time the shovel actually got used because there were other things that stood in the way. I would argue many of those other things were regulations. They were environmental regulations. They were endangered species regulations. And now they would be Portland cement regulations if this regulation stays in place.
Now, is this bill unreasonable? Well, we can analyze that for ourselves. It doesn't say we don't want to clean up the air. It says take another look at this. Factor in the economic impact and the labor impact, and then try to come up with a number that we have existing new ideas to clean up to, and that seems to be 0.05. And then when you've come up with a final rule that is doable in the industry as it exists--and that's part of the direction that EPA is given. It needs to be doable out in the actual working environment that it's in, not in some laboratory someplace. If you put rules together that will do that, then we'll all start to do it. And give us 5 years--we may do it quicker, but give us at least 5 years to spread out the cost because we're talking about a lot of cost for an industry that has to struggle. So give them a chance to get this thing done in a reasonable point of time.
Meanwhile, we're not making the air any dirtier. We're just maintaining the status quo which was cleaned up in 1999 and cleaned up again in 2006. So this is the third new standard. It's not like we have the dirty plants like our foreign competitors. No, we don't. We cleaned our act up in 1999 and cleaned them up again in 2006, and the only thing that kept anything from getting done was lawsuits filed by environmentalists who said it wasn't enough.
Well, the industry tries its best to meet the standards. Obviously, they change almost every 5 years. So what's wrong with a period of time that says give us a chance to have 5 years to change? It's not unreasonable. It's a reasonable request to save jobs and keep an American industry alive in this country. So that's the example. That's what's being discussed today.
Next week and the week after that, there will be other bills that are out there.
Here is one that's probably the next one to come along, the Boiler MACT rules. What does that mean? Well, it means that we are taking a look at industries and entities that use boilers in their operation either to heat and cool or whatever, but they use a boiler to do it. And this is going to take place I think if not this week, early next week, maybe tomorrow.
Here's a statement about it. From hospitals to factories to colleges to industry, thousands of major American employers use boilers that will be impacted by the EPA's new Boiler MACT rules. These stringent rules will impose billions of dollars in capital and compliance costs, increase the costs of many goods and services, and put over 200,000 people's jobs at risk. American forest and paper industry, for example, will see an additional burden of at least 5 to $7 billion.
H.R. 2250, a bill that we will have, the EPA Regulatory Relief Act, sponsored by Morgan Griffith of Virginia, will provide a legislative stay of four interrelated rules issued by the EPA in March of this year. The legislation would also provide the EPA with at least 15 months to repropose and finalize new and achievable rules that do not destroy jobs and provide employers with an extended compliance period.
Sound familiar? It's basically the same thing.
Hold up. What you're doing could cost 200,000 jobs and billions of dollars in extra costs. Take another look at it. Take a look at the jobs in a possibly double-dip recession that's coming up and say, Is that really what we want to do? Do we really want to have a potential of losing 200,000 jobs or more because we're not willing to take another look and see if there's not a better idea to make this thing clean? What's another 15 months when you are being told these kind of economic ramifications are there? And, by the way, give us 4 years to put them in place once you come up with these reasonable rules.
This is not unreasonable. This is, again, thinking first about the working person and thinking first about our economy and what it takes to make our place run in a clean, efficient, and manageable manner. And if we don't get that, we lose jobs.
In this environment, for the last 3 years, we've had an interesting concept. When we put the stimulus package out there, we were waiting to hear how many jobs we had created. Well, we heard about a few. Some of those jobs cost a lot of money to create them. You get a $40,000-a-year job and you spend $1 million of America's tax money to get that $40,000-a-year job. It's not real economically feasible, but we have some of those jobs. But the other thing we heard from people was, oh, well, it's not just the jobs we create; it's the jobs we saved. Well, that's exactly what we're talking about.
We've got evidence that jobs are going down the tubes as a result of the action of a United States Government bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency. They are going to cause potentially the loss of 200,000 jobs. Pass this, and we've just saved, just like the Obama administration, we just saved 200,000 jobs. This is good. This is how we do things now. We've been told for the last 3 years this is how we estimate we're doing good.
Now, it didn't turn out exactly that way, but at least you're not going to make those unemployment numbers go up. And one of our goals is to stop those things from going up and start them going down. It's the goal of every American. It's the goal of the President, and it's the goal of every American that works up here on the Hill. We have different concepts of how to go about it. We can look at the concepts that have been used thus far and see what their success is.
How about looking at some new ideas and see how successful those will be? If we can cut costs to people who create jobs, we'll get more jobs. If we can keep jobs that pay well for the American worker, he will be able to buy product. He will be in the market. He will help create demand, and we will have more jobs.
But if we are going to, by an action of a Federal agency, if we are going to cost 200,000 jobs and cause industry to go out and spend an inordinate amount, in the billions of dollars, to make the corrections, how many jobs do you think--when they get it cranked up and meeting the EPA standards, how many jobs do you think they're going to create after that? Well, first they have to figure out a way to make up that 5 to $7 billion that the printing industry says they're going to lose. And how are they going to make that up? Guess what? They're not going to hire anybody.
This is not rocket science. This is pretty simple. If you don't have the money, you can't hire anybody. And if you've had to spend money you didn't expect to spend to the tune of 5 to 7 billion--with a B--dollars, it's a tremendous hit. And that's just one industry. That's just the forest and paper industry. In that situation, they're not hiring anybody. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out. It's easy for you to figure that out.
So by the very nature of the regulation we're talking about on boilers, we could be looking at the loss of 200,000 jobs and an extended period that that industry isn't hiring anybody.
Just to give you an example of the regulations that are out there, we've already dealt with a bill by Representative Scott about the National Labor Relations Board telling Boeing that they couldn't build a plant in South Carolina when they wanted to because South Carolina was not a closed shop union State. Mr. Sullivan today is working on the Cement MACT bill. Mr. Griffin is in line, in the queue, to come up with solutions for the Boiler MACT bill. Mr. McKinley has a bill that has to do with coal ash rules. Mrs. Noem has a bill to deal with farm dust rules. And I, with several of my colleagues, have a bill to put a 2-year moratorium on regulations. And we will hopefully come with a bill that will be reasonable, accessible, and acceptable to the people that are concerned about this and put a stop to this question mark that industry is asking: What's around the corner? Because there's tons of rules around the corner.
In the month of July, there's almost 300 new major rules that will affect this country with over $100 million or more. There were almost 300 of them. In August, there were almost 400 of them. Now we're just talking about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, right here, bills to deal with seven instances. But the person who keeps up and looks at these other regulations that are out there says, Holy cow, what's out there? If these things are going to cost, like the example with this EPA Regulatory Relief Act, if the Boiler MACT rules are going to cost one industry $7 billion, what about all those other rules? We don't even know what they do. And what are they going to do to us?
And once again we have to convince the people who are standing on the sidelines to get back in the game and hire folks so we'll have jobs in this country.
It is unacceptable for us to look at 9 percent unemployment as the low figure for this year. It's unacceptable. It's been much higher. We've come down to 9.3, we seem to have stuck there, but that's unacceptable for an unemployment number in America. But you can't stop it unless you get real jobs created by real people. And the way you do that is take the unknown out of their lives at least until we can get our feet back on the ground.
You know, throwing all the money in the world at our problems, we have some pretty good examples of how that doesn't work, the stimulus bill being the perfect example. We threw a half a billion dollars at that solar company out there in California that is under Federal investigation by the Justice Department for what they did with our money. A half a billion dollars was thrown at those people, and what happened? Where is our money? Where did it go? They shut the doors. They declared bankruptcy. We threw it at them in a relatively short period of time, 2 or 3 years. That's a lot of money to blow in 2 or 3 years. We're now learning that some of the stuff they have is like the--not Mercedes Benz, but more the Lamborghini model of furniture and fixtures and so forth, high-dollar stuff. But the reality is we threw money at a problem, and the money didn't solve it. I don't think we should throw money at these problems that we've got right now. I think we should instigate common sense for the problems we've got right now.
I mentioned some of those things that are out there. We've got another bill that's very interesting. It has to do with cross-state air pollution--CSAPR they call this--for utility plants. These are plants that produce electricity. And the truth is that there was a concept, it was designed for the eastern part of the United States because the States are a lot smaller in the eastern part of the United States. So if you're living in Vermont, New Hampshire--and I'm not picking on them, they're just side by side, fairly small. If a plant in Vermont has prevailing winds blowing into New Hampshire and they've got some pollutant out there, they want to be able to stop the cross-State-line expansion of pollution into another State. And that's what these rules are set for.
They set out specifically which States would be under these rules--they expanded them some, but it was designed for the Midwest, some southern States, and the Northeast. And it specifically, for instance, said Texas is not under these rules. Then 19 days before they issued the final rule they said, oh well, we decided, even though we didn't test any of the air, didn't test any of the directions of the air, didn't do any monitoring at all in the State of Texas, we're putting them under the rule anyway, and we're just going to presume that the prevailing winds blow the way we think they do. I don't think anybody that wrote that rule had ever set foot in the State of Texas or they would have known better than that. But they presumed that we were blowing all of our air, any pollution we created up to the Midwest and the Northeast. They presumed that our prevailing winds blew from the Southwest to the Northeast. And I think anybody that lives in Texas knows that's far from the prevailing winds in Texas. If anything, if we have a prevailing wind, it blows from the Gulf of Mexico--which is the Southeast--to the Northwest of our country. And the rest of the West, by the way, is not under these rules, with the exception of Oklahoma.
So these rules are going to impose such onerous air standard qualities that at least in the State of Texas, with one company, they have 13 power plants, they're saying they're going to close two--even before this starts they're going to close two. They're going to close one coal mine. They're going to stop shipping Western coal to that part of our State--because these are coal-powered plants. So there's two offline right there of the 13 they've got online. And potentially they could shut down more than that, maybe even half. That's one company's power plants.
Now, what does that do to you, to us as American citizens? It makes the price of electricity go up. It makes the possibility of a brownout and a blackout more relevant. If it's too cold or it's too hot--and down where we live it's mostly too hot--you might have a power outage. If you take power plants offline because they can't meet EPA standards because the standards are too onerous--and quite honestly a complete surprise in our State because we didn't even know we were supposed to be under this set of rules--we're probably going to have power shortages in our State.
But that's not all. The rest of the country has got these rules too, and they're just as surprising and onerous as they are to us. The only difference between them and us is they knew they were going to be under it--this is the eastern part of the country. We didn't know we were going to be under it, so we've got a particularly loud gripe. But other States are saying the same thing: Holy cow, what are we going to do?
The Midwest, almost all their power comes from coal--not in our State; we still have oil and gas. But in the Midwest, all their power comes from coal. What are they going to do when they start shutting down plants? How cold is it going to be in Chicago this next year--which my dad claims when the wind blows off the lake is the coldest place on Earth--how cold is it going to be when they shut down the power plants in the central part of the United States in the Midwest? It's a frightening thought.
The impact on humanity ought to be one of the analyses that's made when you start making an analysis under these EPA regulations. Nobody wants to dirty up the air, but you can do it with reasonable assumptions as to how much harm you're going to do when you start doing it. And the harm we're looking at here is a lot of harm. It's downright scary what can happen in a cold winter or a hot summer.
We're in the middle of a drought right now in Texas. And where I live, it hasn't rained in--gosh, I don't know, a long time, at least 4 or 5 months. We had barely a sprinkle on top of my patio in the back yard--didn't even get my street wet, but they called it rain. I don't count that. I'm talking about when it rains. Now, could we get one? Yeah. We're a land of wild weather. We could get one tomorrow that would wash us off the face of the Earth. But that's fine--we could use it.
But the point is, that sure tells you how hot it has been. From starting in May until late in the month of September, almost the entire State of Texas had over 100-degree weather every single day. Normally our hot weather starts in late July through August, mid-September we're over 100. We had 105 and 106 the whole summer long. Now you can just imagine how much electricity got cranked out.
If we implement the rules that are imposed by the EPA, we will double the cost of electricity. I'll use my electricity bill as an example. The entire summer my electricity bill was approximately $600 plus a month. What that's telling me is look for $1,200 bucks a month. The guy that's got $200 bucks a month--which is the average smaller home in our area--he's looking at $400 a month. It's a shocker to have something like that happen to you and to realize it had to because people didn't think out regulations they imposed. We can still meet the standards and not put our people at risk. These are the kinds of things that we're talking about that so concern us.
And the first thing, when this all happens--and the reason I've been talking about this now for almost a year is because I'm convinced that a lot of Americans believe that when this happens to them in their life, they believe this is done because the Congress of the United States passed some law that caused that to happen.
They don't know that it's an unelected group of bureaucrats in an agency somewhere that made this decision, not Members of this Congress, not the people they elect to speak for them in Washington, D.C. No, people who have jobs that they can't be fired from and who are entrenched in these agencies around this town write rules that affect the lives of ordinary Americans, and they never know where they came from unless they're in the industry that gets affected. Industry knows what bureaucrats do, but the average American citizen, he doesn't know. That's why everywhere I go, I talk about this because I want everybody to know, but particularly I want my folks back home that I represent to know just what these agencies do on their causes that causes the cost of living to go up.
Well, I'm about through, so I'll do this the easy way. I want to thank the Speaker for his patience. I've got plenty more to talk about. We'll talk about it on another day.
I yield back the balance of my time.


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81 Fitzgerald Dr., Jaffrey, NH 03452Request info Add to list
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Building Details:
• Year Built: 1972
81 Fitzgerald Dr. is an industrial property for lease in Jaffrey, NH.
The subject space is located in the Drumlin Industrial Park less than a mile southeast of the town's central business district and known as 81 Fitzgerald Drive Condominium. It is comprised of a one-story 94,496± SF light industrial building. The building includes two condo units including the subject unit, Unit 2 comprised of 45,549± SF and Unit 1 comprised of 45,392± SF. There is approximately 3,555± SF of common area.
Subject unit consists of approximately 7,500± SF of finished office space plus 38,000± SF of industrial warehouse space now available.
- Property Type: Commercial – Industrial Condominium
- Year Built: 1979±; tenant offices were reportedly renovated in 2007±
- Stories: 1
- Construction: Steel/masonry
- Roof Cover: Tar & Gravel
- Exterior Siding: Front office area has brick and metal fascia; rear industrial area is painted concrete block
- Heating/Cooling: Oil-fired FHA with overhead space heaters in the warehouse space and gas-fired rooftop HVAC units in the offices
- Sprinklers: Fully sprinkled wet system
- Electrical: 1,200-amp, 3-phase, 480-volt service
- Additional: Seven loading docks including three load levelers plus one drive-in door; clear ceiling height is 14 feet
- Lot Size: 7.18± acres (common area)
- Parking: On-site asphalt paved parking area
- Frontage: 558± feet of access frontage on the east side of Fitzgerald Drive and 527± feet on Plantation Drive
- Utilities: Public water and sewer
- Occupancy Status: Jaffrey-Rindge School District is a parcel current tenant.
E-Waste Recyclers, LLC was the former tenant
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Tag: sociology
A global empathy
If you've lived in or spent any significant time in another country, you might have had to answer questions about why your country was doing certain things on the world stage. And if you took time to think of who was asking and how things appeared from their perspectives, your answer might be different than if you spent your life wearing parochial blinders.
I was in Korea when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. I couldn't answer the questions like, "Why is the U.S. doing that?" or the more common one, "Why are Bush and Cheney doing that?" And these from a country that enjoys (not universally) a U.S. presence and strong relationship with the U.S. I couldn't answer not just because I was in the military for part of the time I was there, but also that I tried to understand how things looked from outside the U.S. I was, after all, a guest in their country.
Sam Richards, in this TED Talk titled "A Radical Experiment in Empathy" illustrates a message that I think that every single American needs to hear, whether xenophobic or not. I've lived all over the U.S. and I am continually saddened, if no longer surprised at how Americans view the world. "Speak English!" "But you're in our country." "Speak English anyway." I am also saddened that I know many people that will not understand this video, which is all the more disappointing because despite my other challenges regarding the nature of humans though their arts, I do.
The message is simple: Step out of your tiny world and understand the larger world differently.
It should open some eyes. I really hope it does.
Poor people will be best prepared to deal with a severe economic depression.
Who is best prepared to deal with a severe economic depression? Based on the work of educator and author Ruby Payne, the best survivors in difficult economic times might be those who are in the lowest economic class, those in "generational poverty." Payne has spent her career studying the mindsets of economic classes and studying […]


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People definitely don't agree with the way that Miley Cyrus has chosen to get attention in her post-Hannah Montana phase--"scandalous" has been a commonly used adjective, as was "outrageous."
If there is one thing that most people can agree on, it's that the starlet is in pretty phenomenal shape. Not only did she dance her way around the VMA stage twerking on Robin Thicke during his performance of "Blurred Lines", but she stripped down to nothing but boots in her latest video, "Wrecking Ball".
It may be scandalous, but it's pretty impressive in terms of fitness. Have you ever tried to twerk for more than a few seconds? It's actually pretty hard. It takes some amazing leg power to twerk for as long as she did. So if you want to twerk like Miley, here's what you need to do.
Leg Presses
To give you the power that you need to shake that booty, get on the leg press machine and get pressing. This exercise focuses primarily on your quads--the muscles at the front of your thighs. It will hit your glutes as well, giving you a lot more "shaking" power. With a few sets of 20 to 25 reps (low weight), you'll increase your legs' endurance, which is ideal for more booty-shaking action.
3-Position Calf Raises
Miley Cyrus may have been wearing a pair of tennis shoes at the VMAs, but most twerking goes on in nightclubs--where you're all dressed up in a pair of heels and an LBD. Doing this exercise will focus on your calves--the muscles that do a lot of the work while twerking. You'll make it easier to move comfortably in your heels.
Plie Squats
This type of squat is done by dancers around the world and it focuses on burning the muscles towards the inside of the thighs. These muscles control your hips, and help you to shimmy like a superstar. Do a few sets of these and you'll be amazed at how well you can shake your hips like Shakira.
Downward Dog Pushups
You don't just want to have strong legs, you want to make sure that your core can handle them. This form of pushup targets your arms and upper body, but it forces your core and glute muscles to hold the contraction for a long time. Do a few sets of these pushups and you'll be ready to bend over and shake that booty!
Rear Leg Extensions
The back of your thighs and your butt are the body parts where fat and cellulite tend to accumulate, but they're also the muscles that need to be strong if you're going to get twerking like Miley. This exercise is a straight-leg one that shreds up the muscles on the back of your thighs, slimming down your rear and making it stronger for those times when you can't resist the urge to twerk.
Reverse Lunges
This exercise will definitely give your legs the power you need to shake, and will help to increase your muscle's stamina as well. It's a bit awkward to do these lunges in reverse, but it will change up the exercise and help it to focus on the back of your legs--the muscles that do a lot of the hard "twerk."
Andy Peloquin had battled with weight loss issues his whole life. To overcome this, he began studying fitness and is now in the process of becoming a certified professional fitness trainer. He exercise seven days a week and is excited to share his down-to-earth knowledge of exercise and fitness.


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More from Infinity
Copper Traders Turn Bullish as Inventories Drop to 2009 Low: Commodities
February 10th, 2012
Futures Trading – Copper traders turned bullish for the first time in seven weeks on mounting confidence that global growth will strengthen, diminishing stockpiles after a year in which mine production fell by a record amount.
Thirteen of 25 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect the metal to gain next week and three were neutral. Hedge funds and other money managers are holding their biggest bet on rising prices since early August, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Inventories tracked by the London Metal Exchange are already at a two-year low after global mine output dropped by 200,000 metric tons in 2011, Barclays Capital estimates.
Investments (.CMDOI) in commodities expanded at the quickest pace in six years in January on increasing confidence economies will skirt another recession, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Higher demand comes at a time when producers are struggling to keep up, as lower ore grades, strikes and slower-than-expected mine developments limit supply growth. Barclays anticipates a third consecutive copper shortage in 2012 and another one next year.
"Copper is always a forward looking indicator of where the economy is going to be," said Dan Smith, an analyst at Standard Chartered Plc in London. "Things are improving in the financial markets, people are becoming more bullish."
The metal rose 14 percent to $8,673.50 a metric ton this year on the London Metal Exchange, the best start since 2008. The Standard & Poor's GSCI gauge of 24 commodities added 4.8 percent and MSCI All-Country World Index (MXWD) of equities gained 8.9 percent, entering a bull market from its October low. Treasuries lost 0.6 percent, a Bank of America Corp. index (MXWD) shows.
Continue reading »
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text: Anthony Towns: > Mmm; privately asking someone who works on the FHS is a different thing > to asking on the FHS lists, or actually talking to our users. True. > Claiming support from the FHS guys on the basis of a conversation with > Chris doesn't seem appropriate; anymore than "-policy support" would be an > appropriate claim if Manoj had said it looked okay. Agreed. Fortunately, I didn't claim that. -- Thomas Hood


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About the Contributor
About Vipymuss:
Peace. Love. Green tea.
Articles and Art by Vipymuss:
Hairline Fracture (Struggle for world peace)
Poetry section, Teen Ink
Vipymuss's Favorite Personal Quote:Evil is non-existent in the eyes of the heart.
Vipymuss's Hobbies & Favorites:
|Favorite books:
|Mere Christianity, Comunist Manifesto, Screwtape Letters, Charlie St. Cloud, The lucky One
|Favorite authors:
|C.S. Lewis, Nicholas Sparks, Karl Marx, Jules Verne, James Patterson
|Favorite music albums:
|Continuum (John Mayer), Room for square (John Mayer), Greatest hits (Journey), Holding onto strings better left to fray (seether), Kaleidoscope heart (Sara Bareilles
|Favorite music artists:
|Sara Bareilles, John Mayer, Erin Mcarly, Johnny Cash, Ed Sheeran
|Favorite movies:
|Star wars, Godfathers, Red Dawn, Rambo, A Walk to Remember
|Favorite movie stars:
|Patrick Swayze, Ariana Grande
|Favorite TV shows:
|P&H, Spongebob, Tosh.o, So Random, Adventure Time
|Favorite actors:
|Ariana Grande, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Will Smith, Paul Newman
|Favorite gadgets:
|Computer (photoshop), Iphone, Radio, Watch, Nook
|Favorite hobbies:
|Art, Watercolors, Drawing, Painting, Weight lifting


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Everyone knows the Sunday school lessons about the Samaritan woman at the well. The Samaritans were the enemies of Israel, the standard story goes, so for Jesus to "convert" the enemy woman was quite an accomplishment. To make the lesson even more pious, Jesus magically "knows" that she is not married to the man she is currently living with, and [gasp!] has had five husbands before this one. She runs away and brings all of her friends back to meet "a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?" (KJV). The standard message seems to be that Jesus, like Santa Claus, "knows when you've been bad or good," and certainly this woman must have been some kind of bad to be living with a man who is not her husband, after somehow getting rid of five others. The proof that Jesus is the Christ is his ability to see through all of our pretenses. "The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things" (KJV).
The Sunday school interpretation of the confusing stuff in the middle about not worshiping God on the mountain or in Jerusalem skirts the edges of anti-Semitism. God wants the real Christians to worship him, and always tell the truth. The test for who is or is not a real Christian is clear. "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (KJV).
But the Gospel of John is not about piety. It is an impassioned and powerful first century argument for a transformed world. Rather than looking at the gospel in cherry-picked pieces – as the Revised Common Lectionary does in order to support orthodox Christian teaching – consider the interior plan, which only becomes apparent when the gospel is read in its own context.
Water as transformation carries the argument for two and a half chapters. At the wedding in Cana, water is transformed into wine; Nicodemus – the expert on religion who should know this – is invited to transform himself; Jesus and his disciples baptize more people than the Baptizer; Jesus meets the enemy woman at Jacob's well and offers transformation (living water); Jesus' disciples don't get it (surprise), so Jesus attempts the metaphor of food, which he defines as "doing the will of the one who sent me and completing his work" – begun by the prophets, and to be completed by Jesus' followers; the Samaritans (unlike the pharisee Nicodemus) listen to Jesus and realize that "he really is the savior of the world"; and the sequence ends as it began: "Then he came back to Cana, Galilee, where he had turned water into wine."
The times were changing at the end of the first century and the beginning of the second century. Jerusalem was sacked; Temple Judaism had perforce become displaced; competition between the factions that believed Jesus to be the Messiah and those who clung to the old tradition was fierce. Much the same as the 21st century, when – as Lloyd Geering proposes – humanity is in the midst of the transition not from theism to atheism, but from theism to secularism. Fundamentalists of all varieties of Abrahamic faiths – Jews, Christians, Muslims – have declared holy war on that transition. There is a place for John's story about Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, but only if the metaphors are reclaimed for 21st century cosmology.
John's metaphor of water into wine, which frames the vignettes with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well, represents not just "transformation," but "transmutation." To follow the teachings of Jesus means that one's life becomes something fundamentally different from what it was before. John did not use the metaphor of the refiner's fire, which purifies, clarifies, decontaminates, as the prophet Malachi claims God's messenger will do (Malachi 3:1-5). Malachi was warning the priests of Israel that the representative of God's covenant was coming soon to "purify the descendents of Levi" who had stopped following God's rule: "'I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerors, against the adulturers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me,' says the Lord" (NRSV).
John is not satisfied with cleansing and polishing. John says, whoever believes Jesus is the Anointed One is changed (in the apostle Paul's words "in the twinkling of an eye) – from injustice and death to justice and life: from water into wine. For 21st century non-theists, this means a fundamental shift in mind and paradigm from fear to love; from greed to sharing; from unjust systems that are the normal consequence of civilization's laws to distributive justice-compassion.
Just in case anyone thinks that John has made Malachi's list irrelevant, consider the following update: political leger demain, sex trafficking, corporate bait-and-switch tactics, union busting, blaming the poor for their plight, and hating anyone who looks, speaks, or acts different from the prevailing population. Further, if "God" is seen as "Gaia," we can apply the same list of atrocities carried out against people to the earth itself. With that understanding, the wrath of God that Malachi invokes with his threat of refinement "until they present offerings in righteousness" can be seen as the consequences of misplaced dominion over earth's resources. Until we stop mountaintop removal, deep-sea oil extraction, "fracking" for natural gas, and unchecked pollutants pouring into the earth, the air, and the water, we can expect continuing climate change, disruptions to growing seasons, famines, floods – the mythic four horsemen of the apocalypse wreaking havoc on life as we know it.
When we experience a sustainable earth as the one that provides all life-forms with "living water," and join the work of distributive justice-compassion ("food" the disciples knew nothng about), then we can talk about worshiping "in spirit and in truth" in the King James language, or "as [God] truly is, without regard to place" (The Complete Gospels scholars translation). Tweet


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Amarillo firefighter Mark Mendez expected to get hit in the face — and he hasn't been disappointed.
As more and more tough guys are these days, Mendez is a fan of mixed martial arts.
Mendez, along with several other members of the Amarillo Fire Department, is getting a little taste of what Georges St-Pierre might go through before a fight — getting abused by the staff at Amarillo's Elite MMA & Fitness.
It is officially called training, but abuse wouldn't be a totally inaccurate description.
"I expected to get hit in the face a lot," Mendez said of his training, an honest remark which drew an appreciative nod from fellow Amarillo firefighter and teammate Chad Munkres.
"It turned out I didn't like it as much as I thought I would."
The shots to the face are worth it, at least as far as the AFD is concerned — and the same can be said for members of the Amarillo Police Department.
The firemen and the cops will duke it out in the "Battle of the Badges" on April 27 at the Amarillo Civic Center — a charity boxing event that benefits The 100 Club of the Texas Panhandle. The 100 Club provides assistance to families of certified peace officers/firefighters who are killed or seriously injured in the line of duty.
While punches are thrown in the spirit of benevolence, let's just say the punches are also thrown with not-so-good intentions.
According to the firefighters, they are undefeated in the past three battles against the cops.
And no, there were no cracks about cops and doughnuts, at least no wisecracks that reached my ears.
"It is awesome to see them on scene and give them a little jab every now and then," said AFD team captain Jason Bell, who is 3-0 against the APD. "It is a good feeling."
"We've got a lot of weight on our shoulders to win it again," said AFD team member Manny Rosales, who is 2-0 against the APD.
Bragging rights are one thing, but there's a reason to fight.
"The 100 Club is what it is all about, really," Mendez said. "It is personal to us as well as the police officers. If something were to happen to me, it is good to know there is something out there to help my family."
A pat on the back
To the 2014 Chevrolet Camaro: I recently saw a picture of the 2014 version of the Camaro (most have probably already seen it, but cut me some slack), and was impressed. It seems slowly but surely the Camaro is starting to resemble the classic version so many of us owned in the 1980s. You can't beat T-tops.
A kick in the pants
To gay marriage: To be honest, I think it should be left up to the states to decide the matter, because finding any legitimate constitutional guidance on this issue is a major stretch. If the majority of residents in a certain state favor gay marriage — hey, so be it. Most of us have other things to do than endlessly debating ways to make divorce lawyers more money.
Dave Henry is AGN Media Director of Commentary.