text:
Tenure Track Faculty Positions
These positions come with an expectation of instruction, research and service. All positions carry academic rank, and incumbents are expected to stand for tenure. These faculty positions require a terminal degree.
Non-Tenure Track Faculty Positions
These positions provide non-tenurable level instruction, research only and/or related functions. Titles may include the following:
NTT Faculty with Relevant Terminal Degree:
- Assistant Teaching/Clinical Professor
- Associate Teaching/Clinical Professor
- Teaching/Clinical Professor
All Other NTT Faculty:
- Instructor/Clinical Instructor
- Lecturer/Clinical Lecturer
- Senior Lecturer /Senior Clinical Lecturer
Professional Positions
Professional positions perform work predominantly intellectual in nature and require consistent exercise of discretion and judgment while carrying out job duties. These positions are salaried (overtime exempt) as determined under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Some positions involve administration, management or coordination with titles such as Dean or Director. Professional positions in athletics carry titles such as coach, assistant coach, and trainer. A bachelor's degree, most often, is required as a minimum educational requirement for a professional position. Additionally, many positions require advanced knowledge and experience.
Research Positions
Research positions provide institutional research or research support and carry titles such as Postdoctoral Research Associate or Research Associate. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, research positions are salaried (overtime exempt). A master's degree is most often a minimum educational requirement for research positions. Many research positions require additional related education and experience.
Classified Positions
These positions provide institutional support over a wide spectrum of occupations. Positions with titles such as physician, accountant, programmer/analyst, and research specialist frequently require a bachelor's degree or higher and/or a record of professional experience. Positions with titles such as administrative assistant, accounting technician, research aide, custodian, and food service worker range from entry level to advanced. Skilled craft positions are primarily located within Facilities Services and include titles such as carpenter, electrician, machinist, plumber, and painter.
MSU Extension Positions
These positions involve the outreach responsibilities of the Extension Service. Some of these positions are located in county Extension Service offices distributed throughout the state, with titles such as county Extension agent or county chair, while others are Extension specialist positions in Bozeman. The positions carry academic rank and some are eligible for tenure. A bachelor's degree is the minimum educational requirement for a professional position, with a master's degree preferred for most positions.
Affiliate Positions
Includes employment listings available at the MSU Foundation, the campuses of MSU Billings, MSU Great Falls and MSU Northern and the Montana University System Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education.
Custom Benefits Calculator
The custom calculator provides an estimate of the minimum monetary value of the complete compensation package for benefits-eligible jobs.
Students and Alumni looking for positions elsewhere are invited to try:
Career, Internship & Student Employment Services Job Search
Career Services maintains links to many Web sites advertising job opportunities in many fields and locations throughout the country. The links are organized by academic college, and the site also features a general job search capability.The Student Employment Center is located in the Career, Internship & Student Employment Services, Strand Union Building, Room 177. The center provides students with information concerning on-campus and off-campus jobs, including part-time jobs during the academic year and part/full-time jobs for the summer. There is no charge and students do not have to be receiving financial aid to use this service.


text:
Panama's highways are among the best in Central America, with 4-lane freeways spanning the country, for quick access to surf spots. The public transport system of buses is good, or you can rapidly hail a taxi from the international airport. If you opt to rent a car, it is very easy to reach the various beaches with the help of a map or asking people in the villages along the way.
The sites for surfing in the Pacific Ocean west of Panama City are:
Malibú Beach is located directly in front of the river. It is a sandy-bottomed site with waves that go from right to left and break best at mid and low tides.
El Palmar beach is located after the town of San Carlos and has 3 breaks: the Front, the Point, and Little Hawaii.
Venao Beach is in the province of Los Santos. It has a sandy bottom (beach break), and the waves are around 3-6 feet year-round, occasionally reaching 8-10 feet high. Venao Beach is near the town of Pedasí, where you can find a range of lodging in hotels or hostels.
Santa Catalina is the most famous beach worldwide for its world-class waves. Santa Catalina is located in the Gulf of Chiriquí in the province of Veraguas. Back in 1970 a couple of surfers in search of waves discovered what was to become the most famous wave in Panama. In the town you can stay at a hotel or hostel, or rent a room.
If you're looking for waves on the Caribbean coast, then head to these sites:
The islands of Bocas Del Toro to the north, on the Caribbean side of Panama, have some of the best surfing in Panama, with a variety of surfing spots. The best waves in this area are found during the dry season from December to March.
One of the best beaches on Colón Island is Dumpers, a site with lefts and a reef bottom with a steep drop, large tunnel, and short trip. Another spot is at Punch, with lefts, rights, and a reef bottom with sections of good tunnels that are fun to hit and do aerial maneuvers.
You can also learn to surf at one of Panama's several schools, such as:
- Palmar Surf Camp
- Nitro City
- Surf School Panama
- Panama Surf School
What to bring
- Sunscreen and hat
- Food and water
- Surfboard
- Swimsuit
- Lycra surf clothing

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Dr. Matt Townsend is a nationally-recognized relationship expert. He specializes in communication, relationship education, life management, and conflict resolution. Matt founded the Townsend Relationship Center after spending ten years as a consultant for Franklin Covey. He now dedicates his time to Corporate speaking and training as well as coaching couples one-on-one and conducting marriage seminars around the country.
Big Announcement!
posted Sep 6th - 6:59pm
Last Matt Townsend Show on KSL.
Self-Sufficient Children
posted Aug 23rd - 3:13pm
Do our children have a sense of responsibility?
Sucker Stopper
posted Aug 16th - 12:11pm
How to deal with people that hurt us?
One Awesome Summer
posted Jul 26th - 4:15pm
What would create a powerful school year for your kids?
Raising Socially Healthy Kids
posted Jul 12th - 12:28pm
In todays world are we teaching enough?
Lessons of a 75-year Marriage
posted Apr 12th - 10:56pm
What makes a lasting love?
Finding What Works in Marriage
posted Mar 1st - 12:36pm
Best Practices
Are you too nice or are you real?
posted Jan 25th - 1:13pm
We're only as healthy our ability to be real.
New Years Resolution Again?
posted Jan 4th - 6:09pm
Lets make it a revolution not a resolution.
Motivating our Kids
posted Oct 26th - 5:13pm
How to get more movement
Where's Matt?
Smart Relationships
Have you ever felt stuck in your life, unmotivated, unfocused, and in need of a boost? Have you ever wished you could have more opportunities to learn, explore and grow? When life gets tough, it's time to get smart! The Smart Relationships program is your chance to find a better you.Each hour and a half class includes group discussions and teaching, presented by Matt Townsend.These classes are for singles, women, men, and couples . . . for anyone and everyone! Check the calendar for dates and times http://www.matttownsend.com Location:
405 E. 12450 S. Suite C
Draper, UT 84020
Cost: $15 per person
Date Night with Matt Townsend
Renew your relationship and enjoy a Date Night with Matt Townsend. Matt's date nights focus on a different topic each time. Learn the skills and tools needed to build and strengthen your relationship.
Check http://www.matttownsend.com for dates, times, subject, location and cost.
Or call 801-747-2121
Feeding the STARVED Relationship Workshop
Classes starting soon!
Check the calendar for dates http://www.matttownsend.com/calendar
Townsend Relationship Center
Suite C
Call 801-747-2121 to register or visit http://www.matttownsend.com see upcoming events:
Matt Townsend Podcast
Site Index
KSL's Children's Television Programming Reports, as well as its FCC public inspection file, are available for viewing during regular office hours at the KSL Broadcast House or online.
The station representative who can assist a person with disabilities with issues related to the content of the public files is Mike Dowdle, available during regular office hours at firstname.lastname@example.com and (801) 575-5555.
The station representative who can assist a person with disabilities with issues related to the content of the public files is Mike Dowdle, available during regular office hours at email@example.com and (801) 575-5555.
© 2015 KSL.com | KSL Broadcasting Salt Lake City UT | Site hosted & managed by Deseret Digital Media - a Deseret Media Company v05


text:
Midwest Living Review
A visit to this little wonderland of sugar is sure to thrill just about any kid -- and will please adults with even a hint of a sweet tooth, too. Yum Yum Tree has been making ice cream since 1987, and it's always got something special on tap. For instance, there's the Bailey's Irish Cream flavor owner Lucille Kirkegaard devised for the festival her town (Baileys Harbor -- get it?) holds every year. It's divinely smooth, and safe for children, though there are plenty of other tastes to occupy their mouths. Like the caramel corn, fudge, pastries or pecan, peanut and cashew brittle, which are also made at the store. Those looking for more exotic tastes can take a candy-focused trip around the globe because the sweets on sale are imported from all over the world. (Fans of Zout -- salted licorice -- will be especially delighted; they'll find more varieties of it at Yum Yum Tree than anywhere else for miles around.) If saltwater taffy or a scoop of Door County cherry on a waffle cone aren't what you're craving, there's a deli in the shop that serves sandwiches to eat on the little porch outside. Do note that, like many places in the county, Yum Yum Tree is only open from May through October.


text:
The Zoning Services Group is responsible for administering and enforcing zoning and subdivision regulations. Staff provides zoning analysis to city agencies, citizens, architects, engineers and builders, and reviews and approves construction permits and business licenses for compliance with the Zoning Ordinance. Zoning Inspectors respond to citizen complaints and inspect property for zoning and Special Use Permit (SUP) violations. In addition, zoning staff provides support to the Board of Zoning Appeals, a quasi-judicial citizen appointed board that hears requests for variances, special exceptions and appeals. Zoning staff is available by phone at 703.746.4333 or in person at the Planning and Zoning Counter from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday - Friday.
The Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) hears requests for variances, special exceptions and appeals. The BZA holds monthly public hearings in the City Council Chambers at 7:30 p.m. on the 2nd floor of City Hall.
Uses listed in the Zoning Ordinance as Special Uses require either an administrative or public hearing Special Use Permit (SUP) before they can be established. Forms are available below to apply for SUP approval.
Applications and Fees
Initiatives and Programs
Zoning Resources
Department of Planning and ZoningZoning Services301 King Street, Suite 2100Alexandria, Virginia 22313Phone: 703.746.4666Office hours: Monday - Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm
All Zoning Services staff can be reached at the above phone number:
Find neighborhood parks?
Start a small business?
Learn about new development?
Pay my taxes or parking citation?
Report fraud, waste and abuse?
Speak at a City Council meeting?
Apply for a marriage license?
Find information for retired City employees?
Get information about permits?
Search property and sales data?
Find visitor information?
Find volunteer opportunities?
Obtain and review public documents and records?
Find information about parking?
Learn more about Verizon FiOS?
301 King Street, Room 2100
Alexandria, VA 22314
Fax: 703.838.6393E-Mail
Office Hours:
Monday - Friday
8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.


text:
(based on 47 reviews)
Ratings Distribution
5 Stars
4 Stars
3 Stars
2 Stars
1 Stars
of respondents would recommend this to a friend.
Best Uses
Reviewed by 47 customers
Sort by
Displaying reviews 1-10
Back to top
Previous | Next »
Banana Bag
By Mz. Troy
from Vidalia, La.
About Me Budget Shopper
Comments about Banana Storage Bag:
This is a really good item. It really does keep your bananas fresh longer.
Bottom LineYes, I would recommend this to a friend
Was this review helpful? Yes / No
- You may also flag this review
good thing
By jet
from tx
My husband loves this bag.
Not a good deal
By ptjan
from Baltimore, MD
This did not keep the bananas any fresher than just putting them in the refrigerator. Bad buy.
Bottom LineNo, I would not recommend this to a friend
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
By Speedywac
from NJ
I couldn't believe how long the bananas lasted and were still good.
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
Not Necessary!
By MsAdventure
from Wisconsin
About Me Midrange Shopper
I was really hoping this bag would keep my bananas in good condition for longer, but I was disappointed. After just 2 days in the bag in the fridge, banana peels were black, & fruit itself was edible, but a bit brown. Guess What? The exact same thing happens if you put bananas in the fridge WITHOUT a bag! So, it's not at all necessary, and since it is bigger than a bunch of bananas, takes up a lot of space. Waste of money!
Product didn't work
By Joanna
from Nora Springs, IA
The banana bag did not keep the bananas nice and yellow like the advertisement. Instead, the bananas turned black on the outside. When peeled, the inside of the banana was not black, but it had an odd taste. The bananas did not keep any longer than they usually do. I will keep the bag because it will make a nice little tote bag for a swimsuit or other use.
good product
By Beaderlady
from Jacksonville Fl
This is ageat product-however when washing the item it is difficult to get the "stuffing" back in place. the "stuffing material needs to be stitched in place so when washing the item it will not be all jumbled up into a ball. If this was tested in the making of the product this problem would not happen.
I'm glad I have the bag. It works good.
By Miss Sunshine
from McMinnville, OR
I found this product to be a very good thing to have. It keeps the bananas for a long time in refrigerator without them going bad or too ripe.
Edible Bananas
By Product User
from Sacramento, Ca
This actually Does keep the bananas good to eat for several days. It was great not to have the last 2 bananas of the bunch go bad because we didn't eat them right away! Saves $ as well as food!
banana bag
By me
from new jersey
About Me High-end Shopper
It does nothing, except keep away fruit flies


text:
Unfiltered takes on politics, ideas and culture from Nation editors and contributors.
Perhaps the whole point of a riot is to defy explanation: it's an eruption of the irrational, a shattering of glass and boundaries, a testosterone-fueled roar that briefly flips anger and emptiness into something like ecstasy. What's in the minds of the young men (and women, too) in London, Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool who've sent great sheets of flame rising into the August night, devouring local businesses that it took years to build; who've turned plate glass to spiderwebs with one crack of a brick; who've gone home with their backpacks stuffed with cell phones, Nike trainers, X-boxes and Wiis? Well, wouldn't we like to know, we middle-class types with access to a blog and an analysis, a "network" and a future?
Today Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson returned reluctantly from their vacations to confront the arson and looting that have spread through Britain's cities over the last three nights, like a pair of Eton prefects summoned to contain the fifth form. Parliament has been recalled for the second time this summer (the first was over phone hacking by Murdoch's News International); 450 people have already been arrested; Cameron has promised 6,000 more police on London's streets this evening. But will it be enough?
Missy, who works at a small shop selling jeans and sneakers down the road from where I live, shrugs when I ask her what she's going to do tonight. The metal grille was down and properly locked yesterday; "they" trashed the place anyway. "They know the shop," she says. "They went straight upstairs where we keep the expensive stuff, the £300 jeans." A few blocks on, outside a smashed-up cycle shop where twisted bikes lie like skeletons on the pavement, a forensic expert carefully dusts glass with fingerprint powder. Does she think she'll find anything? Another shrug. In Dalston, next to Hackney which saw some of the worst rioting, the Turkish Kurdish community have taken charge themselves, standing guard outside their shops, some of them with baseball bats.
The blue touchpaper that lit the conflagration was the killing of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black father of four, by armed police in Tottenham, one of London's poorest boroughs, as he rode in a minicab; he had a handgun but there's been no claim that he made a move to fire it. A small crowd of local residents gathered at the police station to demand explanations; though the protesters were peaceful, the police were not forthcoming. By nightfall, against the wishes of Duggan's relatives, rioting had broken out in Tottenham and elsewhere. Police cars and a double decker bus were set on fire and shop windows were smashed, mostly by teenage boys.
What began as an outburst of anger against police violence soon morphed into an orgy of nocturnal "shopping" as kids broke into sports and electronics shops, cellphone stores and supermarkets. A brave woman in Hackney gave a streetcorner sermon amid heaps of litter, excoriating the rioters for turning grief to greed: "This is about a fucking man who got shot in Tottenham. This isn't about having fun on a riot and busting up the place. Get real, black people, get real. If we're fighting for a cause let's fight for a fucking cause." But in the deprived neighbourhoods of Britain's crumbling cities, consumerism is a more accessible dream than commitment or community.
And so it has gone on, night after night since then, frightening, unpredictable and uncontainable. The police are overwhelmed; the politicians nervously continue to plough their furrows. "Sheer criminality," says Home Secretary Teresa May, as if any attempt to understand what's at the root of all this rage would imply condoning it. Labour politicians flirt with the temptation to blame government spending cuts, as if such fury could build up in a matter of mere months. Of course the cuts don't help: they are the final straw, the irrefutable evidence that the poor are now dispensable, outside society. Nor does the larger sense that nobody's in charge, that the economy's in freefall, that bankers have been looting the public purse for years, and that our leaders have no idea what to do about any of it. There is a doomsday feeling on the streets of London: time to grab what you can, burn it down and live for now, because who knows what's coming for us all tomorrow.
But it's taken years to brew the toxic mix of hopelessness, frustration and disenfranchisement, envy, anger and boredom, greed and selfishness, humiliation and recklessness that's erupted in Britain this week--years in which the gap between rich and poor grew wider, racism was allowed to fester, consumerism and celebrity culture replaced community. While we in the middle classes got on with our oh-so-busy lives, averting our eyes from the poverty just a few blocks away, sending our kids to schools where there are other "motivated parents," talking politics, we allowed the rifts in our own neighbourhoods to deepen until they became almost unbridgeable.
This morning, down the road, people stared at the broken shops, shaking their heads in disbelief. "It's mad," they said. "Just mad." Small groups of women set out with brooms and dustpans to sweep up the broken glass. There is a kind of solidarity taking shape, a wish to protect what we have, now that it's under threat. People are talking to each other, asking if everything's all right. The challenge, when all this dies down, will be to stay awake, to keep on doing that, until solidarity spreads.
It went a little under the radar, but the Washington Post's long Sunday feature was an excellent look at the forces driving Republicans to intransigence on the debt deal. In fact, it's worth reading the story as somethng of a companion piece to Drew Westen's long op-ed in the Sunday New York Times. Westen, a political consultant, blames President Obama's political troubles on a failure of rhetoric. If Obama had given better speeches or "connected" with the American poeple, then his administration would have stood a better chance against an intransigent and right-wing Republican Party.
As John Sides points out at The Monkey Cage, this is a massive overestimation of rhetoric's power to shape the public narrative, and it is a poor analysis of the actual constraints faced by the president of the United States. As Sides puts it, "We can learn little about Barack Obama's presidency from 3,000 words about speeches never given and the alleged character flaws implied therefore. Presidents are embedded in a political system that is full of other actors who themselves have agency, who shape outcomes, and who[m] the president cannot control, least of all by telling stories."
The Washington Post feature acts a great rebuttal to Westen's op-ed if only because it details the extent to which this month's debt deal is a product of political events that were largely out of the president's control. In last year's Congressional elections, on the strength of their right wing, Republicans won a large and unprecedented majority in the House of Representatives, which had important implications for 2011's budget fights.
To wit, the House would have a huge number of GOP members who fell on the far right of their caucus, and who were most interested in sharp budget cuts. Here's how the Washington Post describes it:
Rep. John Boehner (Ohio), the incoming House speaker who also had worked hard on behalf of many candidates, quickly grasped the potential dilemma posed by eighty-seven newcomers with steep expectations. The House was now stocked with people who had little interest in rubber-stamping another debt-limit increase.
"I've made it pretty clear to them that as we get into next year, it's pretty clear that Congress is going to have to deal with" the debt limit, Boehner told reporters on Nov. 19. "We're going to have to deal with it as adults. Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations, and we have obligations on our part."
Moreover, because of their ideological fervor and stated opposition to raising the debt ceiling, these members would wield a tremendous amount of leverage, both within their caucus and in negotiations with Democrats and the White House. And this is exactly what happened: by occupying a powerful place within the GOP majority, Tea Partiers could exercise an effective veto on actions by the entire Republican caucus. In effect, this meant that Tea Partyers could exercise a veto over Congress as a whole, since the Constitution mandates agreement by both chambers in order for a bill to become a law.
I've said this before, but any political analysis of the last several months needs to begin with November 2010. Yes, Obama could have been a better negotiator; Republican leverage over the debt ceiling was a product of the midterm elections. Insofar as there's any lesson to learn, it's this: liberals need to worry less about narratives, and more about winning elections.
As you might have heard—considering the entire political establishment has spent the past seventy-two hours debating it—Standard & Poor's followed through on its threat to downgrade the federal government's credit rating.
Standard & Poor's declared in April that if $4 trillion in savings was not achieved in the debt ceiling deal, it would downgrade the government's credit rating from AAA status. They did so on Friday, citing not only a deal that achieved "only" $2.1 trillion in savings but also Republican intransigence against raising new revenue and the party's hostage-taking over the debt ceiling. The agency also downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, since they depend on the federal government for support. Another credit rating agency, Moody's, is threatening downgrade as well.
The downgrade is yet another chapter in the bogus deficit drama that has gripped Washington for the past several months. Once again: interest on our debt is 5.7 percent of total government spending, half of what it was for the past fifty years. Treasury bonds, which are how the government finances its debt, remain highly desirable to investors, and even in the wake of the "downgrade," maintained their low interest rates.
It's a deeply silly idea that US Treasury bonds are no longer a safe investment because the solution to a manufactured crisis fell $1.9 million short of an arbitrary goal. As Paul Krugman wrote today, "US solvency depends hardly at all on what happens in the near or even medium term: an extra trillion in debt adds only a fraction of a percent of GDP to future interest costs, so a couple of trillion more or less barely signifies in the long term." While Standard & Poor's correctly identified other factors threatening long-term fiscal stability, like inflated healthcare costs and political opposition to new revenue, both were also well-known factors one year ago, and five years before that—but Standard & Poor's said nothing.
The Standard & Poor's analysis is all the more silly given the haphazard way in which they calculated the national debt, confusing two different analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and pegging the national debt $2 trillion too high. "This is like an undergrad student mistake," Robert Pollin, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts and co-director of the school's Political Economy Research Institute, told The Nation.
Nobody is laughing at the report's collateral damage, however. Stocks continued to plunge Monday morning, in what Forbes called the "Standard & Poor's stock market crash." Pollin correctly predicted last week that a downgrade would likely not have an impact on Treasury bonds but could rattle stocks, because investors often "act on the basis of incomplete, or even inaccurate, information" and could "interpret the downgrade as evidence of a rising default risk."
Additionally, it's possible that the Fannie and Freddie downgrade could lead to higher mortgage rates for Americans, since the firms back nine out of ten mortgages and might face higher borrowing costs due to the rating change.
The downgrade also further entrenched deficit hysteria into American politics. As my colleague Ben Adler wrote, Republican presidential candidates are stepping over themselves to use the downgrade as evidence that the country's finances are in deep trouble and that President Obama is to blame—while, of course, ignoring everything Standard & Poor's said about Republican fiscal policies.
Many Democrats are quick to highlight those portions of the report—Senator John Kerry said yesterday this was the "Tea Party downgrade"—but are nonetheless validating both Standard & Poor's credibility and the idea that the country is approaching an inability to pay bills. President Obama largely embraced the Standard & Poor's report in a press conference this afternoon, specifically the part about political dysfunction and the need for a balanced approach to revenue reduction.
The bipartisan desire to use the Standard & Poor's report is one possible explanation for their downgrade—since it certainly wasn't economics. Remember that the private rating agencies business model is now seriously endangered.
The Securities and Exchange Commission recently erased rating agencies from all federal rulebooks—meaning they cannot be used as a legal standard for determining safe investments. Moreover, the SEC created entirely new standards of creditworthiness that it hopes will provide a "workable alternative to credit ratings." Already, only four US corporations hold AAA ratings, as highly successful companies like Berkshire Hathaway and General Electric surrendered them years ago without consequence.
The changes are a result of the rating agencies' atrocious performance in evaluating—or not—the real safety of mortgage-backed securities before they badly damaged the global economy despite AAA ratings. A bipartisan Senate subcommittee just named rating agencies as a "key cause" of the financial crisis, and lawsuits are in the offing—Connecticut already sued Standard & Poor's for its role.
Viewed through that lens, Friday's downgrade was a smashing success for the company. The president of the United States just had a press conference to address their report. It was the topic of conversation on every Sunday show, as politicians from both parties held it up as an indictment of the other side.
Pollin speculated this could be rehab for Standard & Poor's previous transgressions—that now the ratings agencies are trying to create an image that "they're hard nosed, they're courageous; this is their best objective analysis. All of a sudden, after being shill for the financial bubble, they're going to be hard-nosed."
Given the possible ulterior motives of Standard & Poor's, even if Democrats are able to score short-term points against twisted GOP economic policies, they should be wary of promoting the company's analysis—and also because the analysis as a whole is plainly unsound. "The cross-currents between political manipulation and actual economic analysis have gotten completely confused. That in itself is dangerous," Pollin said.
The downgrade report serves Standard & Poor's interests in other ways, too—it now has a much higher profile than Moody's or Fitch, the other rating agencies. It seems unlikely Obama will return to the podium to address a subsequent downgrade by Moody's.
Pollin floated one additional bit of speculation: that Standard & Poor's is catering to potential Chinese business by issuing a report that allows China to browbeat the United States. The Chinese state newspaper published a commentary immediately after the downgrade, saying China has "every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets." As the largest holder of US Treasury bonds, China has the most to gain if indeed investors flock the bonds and interest rates rise. "Maybe [Standard & Poor's is] calculating that the real money now is Chinese," Pollin said.
Nobody actually knows what is motivating Standard & Poor's to act in this manner. But one thing is clear: it's not sound economic analysis.
It is clear from Standard & Poor's statement downgrading the federal government's credit rating that it places the blame squarely on Republican actions and policies. Two of S&P's biggest concerns about whether the United States will pay off its debt are whether Republicans will be so insane as to refuse to lift the debt ceiling, a possibility Republicans intentionally stoked fears of, and whether the United States will raise much-needed tax revenue. Specifically, S&P changed its baseline assumption that the Bush tax cuts would expire on schedule in 2012 because Republicans are so insistent that they must be renewed. "We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues," wrote S&P. That adds $4 trillion over ten years to the projected deficits.
So, how are Republican presidential candidates responding? By blaming President Obama, instead of their co-partisans in Congress who are actually responsible. "America's creditworthiness just became the latest casualty in President Obama's failed record of leadership on the economy," said front-runner Mitt Romney in a statement. "His failed policies have led to high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, and now, the unprecedented loss of our nation's prized AAA credit rating." Apparently, Romney knows better than S&P itself why it downgraded our credit rating, and it has nothing to do with lost revenue due to Republican tax cuts, or Republican threats not to pay our debts (a fairly straightforward threat to our creditworthiness if ever there was one.) No, it's just because of our economic performance, which Romney seems to think is determined entirely by the actions of the president and is in no way beyond his control.
Nominal moderate Jon Huntsman was less partisan and more accurate in his apportioning of blame to Washington as a whole. "Out-of-control spending and a lack of leadership in Washington have resulted in President Obama presiding over the first downgrade of the United States credit rating in our history," said Huntsman's statement. "For far too long we have let reckless government spending go unchecked and the cancerous debt afflicting our nation has spread." That's perfectly in keeping with Huntsman's strategy of positioning himself above the partisan fray as Obama and John McCain both did during the primaries last time. Of course, the spending decisions that have brought this on—invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, enacting Medicare Part D, increasing defense and security spending after September 11, 2001—were all initiatives of the Bush administration and his Republican servants in Congress. Huntsman neglects to mention that and instead passively criticizes Obama—but not House Speaker John Boehner—for "presiding over" the downgrade.
Michele Bachmann—who as a member of Congress who refused to vote for a debt ceiling increase is one of the people most responsible for the downgrade—issued a particularly dour statement. "President Obama is destroying the foundations of the US economy one beam at a time," said Bachmann.
Meanwhile Tim Pawlenty, speaking in Grinnell, Iowa, went on a baffling, nonsensical riff that twisted into knots trying to tie the downgrade to generic conservative talking points. "What he [President Obama] doesn't understand is all this talk of the full faith and credit in the United States government, he needs to stop being reminded," explained Pawlenty. "We need to have a president who understands what it means to put our full faith and credit in the American people. His vision for America is to take things out of the private sector and to put it into the government." You can't argue with that, can you?
Lost amid the finger-pointing is any review of how the downgrade could have been averted. But, of course, if you're a Republican you probably don't want to dwell too much on that question, because the ways we could have done so would come into conflict with Republicans' obsessive subservience to the myopic interests of a few wealthy men like the Koch brothers and their fanatic supporters like Grover Norquist. Namely, we could have raised tax revenue. Note that I don't say raising taxes, because we would not have to actually raise marginal rates. Merely allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule would have done the trick. So would closing tax loopholes while actually lowering rates, had they passed the president's bipartisan deficit reduction committee's recommendations, or agreeing to Obama's $4 trillion debt reduction proposal.
If you want to take a longer view of how the US debt reached this height, Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly made a timeline illustrating how it is almost entirely the Republicans' fault. But the long view is not of any interest to the modern Republican Party.
Mitt Romney is the Republican front-runner in national polls and he has raised the most money, but he is lagging in support with an important Republican constituency, especially in the key early states: Tea Party activists. Tea Party leaders say Romney is not the leading candidate among their constituents, even in New Hampshire, which is considered a must-win for the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. "I wouldn't say Romney's the favorite," says Jane Aitken, coordinator for the New Hampshire Tea Party coalition. Aitken declined to say who is in the lead, as her group does not endorse candidates and even their member groups that do endorse have not yet decided who to support. But she says that from conversations with other Tea Party leaders, there is no clear favorite.
"The front-runner [among the Iowa Tea Party] would be Michele Bachmann," says Ryan Rhodes, chairman of the Iowa Tea Party. It is a particularly bad sign for Romney that the qualities in Bachmann that Rhodes cites approvingly are precisely the inverse of Romney's weaknesses, which are his past apostasies and countless policy reversals. "She's been consistent. She's not going to apologize every two seconds for doing things that are not in line with the Tea Party. She hasn't waited to hear what some poll said."
In polls Romney sometimes under-performs his overall numbers among self-identified Tea Party supporters. For instance, a McClatchy-Marist poll found Romney in the lead among all Republican-leaning voters but Rick Perry leading among Tea Party voters.
In the 2008 cycle Romney assiduously courted conservatives, calling for doubling the size of the prison at Guantánamo Bay and flip-flopping on gay rights, abortion rights and immigration reform (he now opposes all of them). His adoption of doctrinaire conservatism on social issues continues in this campaign. On Tuesday his campaign announced a Justice Advisory Committee, which will be co-chaired by Judge Robert Bork, the infamous extremist whose Supreme Court nomination was rejected by the Senate.
But some grassroots conservative activists think Romney has been tacking back to the center in this cycle. "He moved to the right in 2008, now he's going to the left," says Rhodes. Certainly, Romney has been campaigning as a front-runner, focusing on the more broadly appealing subject of jobs while staying out of the debt-ceiling debacle until a deal had been reached.
Tea Party activists also complain of lackluster outreach from the Romney campaign. "I wouldn't say Romney has been doing very well with Tea Party conservatives," says Rhodes. "He's barely been talking to us."
"He basically sticks with state Republican party events," says Aitken. As Politico's Ben Smith reported Monday, Romney has generally had a more spare schedule than other candidates.
The other problem for Romney is his past moderation and the fact that he seems to let his saner instincts prevail on any subject where he hasn't yet calibrated a suitably conservative response. Romney upset many conservative—most notably Rush Limbaugh who said "Bye-bye nomination"—when Romney admitted in June that anthropogenic climate change is occurring. At the first GOP debate Romney disagreed with Tea Party phenomenon Herman Cain's opposition to letting Muslims serve in the cabinet.
Then there's the elephant in the room for Romney: that he signed into law a healthcare reform bill in Massachusetts that relied on an individual mandate which President Obama used as a model for the Affordable Care Act. "I think [Romney's problems among Tea Partyers] is principally because of the mandate in Massachusetts," says Phil Kerpen, vice-president for policy at Americans for Prosperity, a fiscally conservative organization that works with Tea Party groups. "The mandate has become a major issue for conservatives since federal healthcare reform."
What was once Romney's signature achievement, and a reason cited by National Review for endorsing him in the last presidential cycle, has become an enormous liability. The policy, of course, is no more liberal than it was in 2007, but conservatives afflicted with Obama Derangement Syndrome now consider it incipient Bolshevism. Romney's solution—decrying the ACA as a "power grab" while defending his law because it was only at the state level—has strained credulity and failed to mollify his right-wing critics.
FreedomWorks, the Tea Party–affiliated conservative organization run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, is opposed to Romney's candidacy. Although FreedomWorks employees point to his overall record and perceived phoniness, their main policy objection is his record on healthcare.
It seems as if economic conservatism has actually replaced religious social conservatism as the doctrine requiring pure, deeply felt and 100 percent faithful adherence. In Massachusetts the state Citizens for Life group is launching a ballot campaign to repeal Romney's healthcare reform, even as they say Romney's record on abortion itself is acceptable.
Some Tea Party leaders say Romney still stands a chance with their constituents. Sal Russo, the veteran GOP operative who founded Tea Party Express, says his group polls its donors weekly on their preference in the presidential race. No single candidate has emerged as the consistent winner, and no one has broken 30 percent. "The healthcare mess in Massachusetts raises a red flag," says Russo. "We met with Romney and shortly thereafter he started to address it. I worked for Ronald Reagan for years, and many times people didn't agree with Reagan on issues. Whatever somebody did in their college term paper or public office in the past, that's the past. The question is what's your plan today? We're a lot more forward-looking than backward-looking."
So can a more aggressive campaign of outreach win over Romney's Tea Party skeptics? "If he has to answer tough questions about his global warming stance and Romneycare, it's not going to be easy for him," says Rhodes. But no one ever said running for president is easy.
Last weekend, two very different speeches on the future of the teaching profession made news.
The first was from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who appeared Friday before the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, which runs the elite National Board certification process for teachers. The United States must follow the example of nations that out-perform us educationally, Duncan said, and begin to recruit most of our public school teachers from the top thirds of their college classes. To do this, he argued, we will need to raise average starting salaries from $30,00 to $60,000 and average salary caps from $70,000 to $150,000.
Is that really possible in a climate of federal, state and local budget cuts? We can find the money, Duncan said, by utilizing technology to "reorganize" schools (read: raise class sizes and shrink the teacher corps); instituting teacher merit pay based in part on student test score data; loosening teacher job security protections; and cutting teacher benefit and pension packages and redirecting some of the funds toward salaries.
Duncan knows such proposals remain controversial among teachers. "I respectfully urge everyone to take a deep breath, hold their fire, and see this as an opportunity to transform the entire profession," he said, "not as a threat or as an investment we don't need."
The second speech was from the actor Matt Damon, a public school graduate and son of a teacher who made news in March when he slammed the Obama administration's teacher evaluation and pay proposals in a CNN interview. Speaking at the Save Our Schools protest march Saturday near the White House, Damon brought some in the crowd to tears as he painted a more holistic, even romantic portrait of the public school teacher's role.
"I don't know where I would be today if my teachers' job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test," Damon said. "If their very survival as teachers was based [not] on whether I actually fell in love with the process of learning, but rather if I could fill in the right bubble on a test. If they had to spend most of their time desperately drilling us and less time encouraging creativity and original ideas; less time knowing who we were, seeing our strengths, and helping us realize our talents. I honestly don't know where I'd be today if that was the type of education I had. I sure as hell wouldn't be here. I do know that.
"This has been a horrible decade for teachers. I can't imagine how demoralized you must feel."
After the speech, Damon and his mom did a short interview with a libertarian Reason.tv reporter. After criticizing "MBA-style thinking" in education policy and defending teacher tenure, Damon angrily contested the cameraman's assertion that 10 percent of the nation's 3.2 million teachers are bad at their jobs. "Maybe you're a shitty cameraman," Damon countered.
The video went viral.
The Obama administration's education policies have always been controversial among more traditional education liberals, who are disappointed to see a Democratic president pursue an agenda of standardization and weakened union protections. But the always-contentious school reform debate has gotten even nastier over the past several months, with the role of multiple-choice tests emerging as the flashpoint.
Adult test-tampering scandals in Atlanta; Washington, DC; Los Angeles; Pennsylvania; and elsewhere around the country have focused new scrutiny on efforts to tie teacher evaluation and pay to student test scores. Polls of teachers' opinions on performance-based pay schemes are divided; according to Education Next, 72 percent of teachers oppose such policies, while the National Center for Education Information finds 59 percent support them. What's clear is that there is no teacher consensus in favor of the testing regimen created by No Child Left Behind, and that teachers don't broadly support the Obama administration's attempt to expand high-stakes assessments to subjects other than math and reading. Education Next found that 60 percent of teachers oppose tying tenure decisions to test scores. The NCEI poll reported that 44 percent of teachers are dissatisfied with student achievement testing in general.
Teachers (and parents, and Matt Damon) are right to be skeptical of the administration's testing push. While "standards-based-assessment" doesn't have to mean that students are sitting for dozens of new bubble tests—there are other ways to "test," including portfolio-based systems, performance tasks and presentations—the fact of the matter is that some states and school districts will respond to the incentives of Obama's Race to the Top program in ways that over-rationalize learning.
Case in point: While reporting from Colorado this past winter, I observed a school district, Harrison District 2 in Colorado Springs, that gives pencil-and-paper exams in every subject at every grade level. The second grade physical education exam asked, "Draw a picture of how your hands look while they are catching a ball that is thrown above your head," and, "What are two rules students can follow so they do not run into others when running around in physical education class?"
The results of this exam, which tested reading, writing and drawing far more than physical fitness, impacted the gym teacher's evaluation score and pay.
Arne Duncan is aware that there is a difference between sophisticated student assessment and bad student assessment. That's why the Department of Education should provide states and districts with much more specific guidelines about best practices in assessment, particularly in non-traditional subjects such as art, music and physical education. In fact, this would be a great subject for one of the department's national conferences, something akin to the event the DOE hosted in Denver in February on union-district partnerships.
Absent that kind of guidance, the protests of the Matt Damons of the world will only grow louder, and the Obama administration will lose crucial public support for its teacher-quality agenda.
As Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has surged in the polls, her fellow Minnesotan, former Governor Tim Pawlenty, has seethed. How can someone he outranked in the State Senate, who has no legislative achievements and a long record of embarrassing gaffes, be flying past him? Seeing that Bachmann is his main competition in their neighboring state of Iowa and among social conservatives, Pawlenty has been aggressively attacking her in the last few weeks. On Meet the Press he said, "Her record of accomplishment in Congress is nonexistent." Last week Pawlenty told an audience in Iowa that Bachmann has "a pattern of being inaccurate."
Now a Pawlenty campaign worker has apparently called Iowa Republicans saying that Bachmann is unstable. According to Ryan Rhodes, 28, who serves as Chairman of the Iowa Tea Party, he received a call last Saturday from a Pawlenty campaign intern. She inquired as to who he might support in the upcoming Ames Straw Poll, and proceeded to trash Tea Party favorites Herman Cain and Bachmann.
"I told them why I backed off Pawlenty," recalls Rhodes, "and she said something not nice about Herman Cain—but then she said Bachmann is crazy."
Rhodes doesn't remember specifically what the intern said about Cain because he "was more upset about the comment about Bachmann." The essence of the knock on Cain was that he excessively quotes the homespun wisdom of his grandmother. (For example, at the June 13 Republican debate Cain quoted his grandmother on Libya, saying, "It's a mess.") As Rhodes ironically notes, this criticism of Cain constitutes "using something unsubstantive to mock Herman Cain for being unsubstantive" [sic].
When the subject turned to Bachmann, the intern said you can't vote for Bachmann because, "My God, she's a crazy woman."
This gambit apparently backfired, as many of Pawlenty's attacks on Bachmann have. Rhodes says he also disliked the op-ed in the Des Moines Register by Bachmann's former chief of staff Ron Carey in which he endorsed Pawlenty and scathingly criticized Bachmann. Carey called Bachmann "unable, or unwilling, to handle the basic duties of a campaign or congressional office," and said she lacks "the judgment, the demeanor, and the readiness to serve as president." Bachmann's Congressional office is notorious for high turnover and has many disgruntled former staffers. This presents a major potential liability for her campaign, as these staffers criticize her publicly. On the other hand, many of their attacks, such as the anonymous quotes about her migraines, may win her a measure of sympathy.
Rhodes says he interrupted the intern, explaining that he is seriously considering supporting Bachmann. "I was pretty offended," says Rhodes. "That kind of thing turns me off to campaigns. You can attack someone on the substance, but to attack them on an unfounded accusation, I think those things are the politics we don't want to get into."
After the call ended Rhodes posted about the incident on his Facebook page. According to Rhodes, the Pawlenty campaign saw the Facebook posting and Pawlenty's Iowa state director Erik Helland called Rhodes to apologize. Rhodes then took the posting off his Facebook wall. The Pawlenty campaign did not respond to a request for comment. They also did not offer much to Rhodes in the way of explanation as to how this happened.
It may, of course, have just been one young intern going off the reservation. But it's interesting that this particular error reflects an impolitic version of the Pawlenty campaign's pitch: that he is the least problematic choice they have. The rationale for Pawlenty's candidacy cited in the media, and less directly by Pawlenty himself, is that his positions are generically conservative, but he is the most electable choice. Former moderates such as Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman have histories that conservative primary voters dislike. Ardent conservatives such as Cain and Bachmann lack experience or policy expertise. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are unpopular among moderates and discredited in the media. Pawlenty offers a safe choice by process of elimination.
Given that Tea Party activists nominated such polarizing, gaffe-prone firebrands as Sharron Angle, Carl Paladino and Christine O'Donnell for statewide office in the 2010 Republican primaries, Pawlenty's pitch seems unlikely to inspire Tea Partiers. Of course—as Pawlenty would no doubt point out in private—Paladino, Angle and O'Donnell all lost in the general election.
For many Washington policymakers, the official denouement of the debt ceiling debate came not only when President Obama signed an increase into law yesterday, but when two credit rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch, affirmed the country's triple-A rating.
Throughout the rancorous debate, just about every player managed to agree that the United States' AAA rating should not be threatened, even if they disagreed about how to save it. In his weekly radio address last Saturday, Obama warned that "if we don't [reach a deal], for the first time ever, we could lose our country's Triple A credit rating." House Speaker John Boehner called in to Rush Limbaugh's radio program during the negotiations last month and said, "I believe that we've got to act to prevent a default and to prevent a downgrade of our nation's credit rating."
Representative Jim Jordan, head of the powerful Republican Study Committee in the House, said Monday that "Our AAA credit rating remains at risk because President Obama and his fellow tax-and-spend liberals refused to support the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan." Senate majority leader Harry Reid meanwhile claimed that "anything less" than a debt ceiling increase into 2013 would "[risk] an immediate downgrade of America's credit rating."
So by almost all accounts inside the beltway, a downgrade in the federal government's credit rating would be catastrophic. But a closer look at who issues these ratings, how they do it, and the real-world impact of these ratings tells a different story.
The first clue that these ratings might not be highly calibrated, serious indicators of creditworthiness can be found in the 2008 economic collapse. The financial products created by Wall Street that were full of toxic mortgage securities were all blessed with gold-star ratings as safe investments from the country's three main credit ratings agencies, Moody's, Fitch and Standard and Poor's.
These products were so awful as to destroy Lehman Brothers, threaten many other trading firms, and plunge the economy into recession, but the rating agencies consistently told investors they were safe. As William Greider has noted here, this essentially made the rating agencies "unindicted co-conspirators" in the collapse.
Were these agencies just bad at their jobs? Maybe, but Greider offers another theory: since the banks pay the rating agencies to examine their financial products, a harmful rating would persuade the banks to just shop elsewhere for a more favorable outcome. "This is an outrageous conflict of interest at the very heart of the financial system," Greider writes.
Nevertheless, the Washington establishment was obviously not rattled by the rating agencies role in the 2008 collapse. All three agencies played a prominent role in the debt ceiling debate. Each threatened to downgrade the federal government's credit rating if there was a default on US Treasury bonds—a reasonable position—but in some cases, threatened to downgrade anyhow if "significant" deficit reduction isn't achieved, to the tune of $4 trillion in the estimation of Standard & Poor's. That's a little harder to understand.
Contrary to Tea Party hysteria, the United States' debt burden is perfectly manageable. Robert Pollin, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts and co-director of the school's Political Economy Research Institute, noted in an e-mail that the single most significant statistic in evaluating US government debt is the debt servicing burden, meaning that amount of interest payments the government faces relative to annual outlays.
In 2010, interest payments on the debt were 5.7 percent of total government spending. Pollin noted the average for that ratio between 1950 and 2010 was 9.8 percent, meaning that our current debt burden is half the historical average.
So why the panic from rating agencies? Once again, it might come down to good business, not good economics. "The best I can come up with is, in the end, they simply regurgitate what they see as a respectable opinion," Pollin said. "They do this because they are eager to themselves be seen as responsible and respectable to the people who deliver conventional wisdom. The rating agencies depend on such people for their business."
This might explain why rating agencies sounded ominous notes about the nation's debt, but said nothing when the Bush tax cuts were signed into law, which eliminated $2.5 trillion in revenue and were largely favored by conventional Washington wisdom.
But there's also a more sinister theory afoot—one that involves a game of political hardball between rating agencies, particularly Standard and Poor's, and the administration. In an exhaustive journal at firedoglake, Jane Hamsher catalogues an interesting confluence of events around Standard & Poor's threat of downgrade unless $4 trillion in deficit reduction was achieved.
Since the 2008 economic collapse, Congress has been trying to regulate the rating agencies in a tougher manner, in order to force more fair evaluations. The agencies have naturally fought these efforts—and might be making things difficult for the administration as a demonstration of their political power, and to warn the administration off from more stringent regulation.
As Hamsher notes, Standard & Poor's first debt warning came only months after Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law, which contained regulations on rating agencies, albeit mild ones. This was curious timing, since again there is no chance the United States would experience a debt crisis anytime soon and budget-busting tax cuts previously went unquestioned.
This year, on April 13, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with officials from Standard & Poor's and asked them to hold off on any further reports until a budget was completed. But the SEC was in the midst of a series of proposed rule changes and potential investigations of Standard & Poor's role in the economic collapse. And on that same day, the Coburn-Levin Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report saying the credit ratings agencies were a "key cause" of the financial crisis. The Subcommitee recommended the SEC use its authority to "hold credit ratings agencies accountable in civil lawsuits for inflated credit ratings."
On April 15, Standard & Poor's phoned the White House and told them they were issuing a press release providing yet another negative outlook on federal government debt, which it then did. This came at quite a politically sensitive time for the White House, as it was attempting to negotiate a debt ceiling increase with Republicans demanding huge cuts. Geithner had to do a round of talk show interviews the next day, disputing the Standard & Poor's rating threat.
But the damage was done. majority leader Eric Cantor immediately heralded the rating threat, and said "today S&P sent a wake-up call to those in Washington asking Congress to blindly increase the debt limit…. [this] makes clear that the debt limit increase proposed by the Obama Administration must be accompanied by meaningful fiscal reforms." Presidential candidate Mitt Romney meanwhile noted that Standard & Poor's "just downgraded their view for the future of America."
It's not a proven case that Standard & Poor's was trying to bully the administration with downgrade threats, but since there's no real economic basis to those threats, it's at the very least an interesting question.
In any case, since the rating agencies aren't basing their warnings on hard economic data, would a downgrade rattle savvy investors? Perhaps, but it's not as certain as politicians claim. Pollin noted that since interest rates on US Treasury bonds are at all-time lows, it's very likely that investors understand them to be a safe investment. "I'm not sure it would have any impact whatsoever," he said, but added that it could create some collateral panic in the markets anyhow. "Investors frequently act on the basis of incomplete, or even inaccurate, information. They could therefore interpret the downgrade as evidence of a rising default risk."
It's also important to note that while Washington policymakers still hold rating agency approval as sacred, corporate America has long ago jettisoned them. Only four companies hold AAA ratings. Many others, like Berkshire Hathaway, General Electric and Pfizer lost that rating long ago—but are still raking in profits and selling large amounts of stock. According to the Boston Globe, the credit ratings are seen by companies as "more of a straitjacket than a path to riches."
There are already attempts underway to further break the stranglehold of rating agencies. Much to its credit, the SEC recently scrubbed any reliance on rating agencies from federal rulebooks, and created new standards of creditworthiness separate from what is dictated by the current rating agencies. "I believe the rules will provide an appropriate and workable alternative to credit ratings," Mary L. Schapiro, the agency's chairwoman, said in a statement. Pollin has proposed a public, government-run rating agency that could provide a "counterforce to the perverse incentive system facing private agencies." If these efforts are successful, companies like Standard & Poor's might face a downgrade of their own.
The House and Senate left town for a month-long recess with crucial business unfulfilled. Half of the oversight positions mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill are still vacant or occupied by temporary caretakers, including the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which can not assume its full authority until director Richard Cordray is in place. Twenty judicial nominees are still awaiting a final vote on their nominations. One of seven federal district and circuit court judgeships are currently or soon-to-be vacant, reports the Alliance for Justice. And, according to House and Senate Republicans, there's nothing the Obama administration can do about it.
The House and Senate are in "pro-forma" session during the August break for one reason—to prevent Obama from making any recess appointments. (Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein has a good primer on the history behind such appointments.) There's debate over whether a president can make a recess appointment under such a scenario—the Justice Department under Clinton said a president must wait for the Congress to be officially out of session for three days, but there's no specification in the Constitution about that window, according to a 2004 Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit decision. So Obama could, in theory, make the recess appointments and then fight the GOP in court once they contest his authority.
But that's not likely to happen anytime soon. "Obama has not treated executive branch appointments as a high priority (and has been hesitant to make recess appointments even before this latest GOP tactic)," notes Bernstein. Even though Obama has faced a record number of filibusters from Senate Republicans, he's filled only twenty-eight vacant positions through recess appointments.
President Bush, in contrast, made 171 recess appointments during his presidency. To catch up with Bush, Obama would have to make roughly twenty-eight recess appointment per year until the end of his presidency, assuming he wins a second term and governs for eight years. Under the current stalemate, Obama can't even make one.
Republicans counter that Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma session from 2007 onward to prevent President Bush from exercising his recess authority. But by that point Bush had already made six times as many recess appointments as Obama.
Republican obstructionism is hurting the president as much as the GOP's hostage-taking negotiating strategy on the economy. Even if it's a risk, the time has come for the White House to finally start challenging the broken Congress.
—Ari Berman is the author of Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics. Follow him on Twitter at @AriBerman.
Last Monday, a lawyer in Georgia issued a proclamation so grandiose that readers could be forgiven for thinking it came from the Pope himself. The writer was Erick Erickson, editor of the blog Red State. In a post titled "The Absolution I Cannot Give," he intoned:
"In the past 48 hours I have had call after call after call from members of the United States Congress. They've read what I've written.They agree. But they feel the hour is short and the end is nigh.So some are calling looking for alternatives. Some are calling looking for energy. Many are calling looking for absolution. And so I address them and put it here so you can see my advice. I can give no absolution for what you may be about to do. I can offer no alternatives."
Republicans in Congress were begging a blogger for permission to vote for the best interests of the country by raising the debt ceiling. If you don't follow the conservative blogosphere you might have wondered just who is this person was and how he became so important.
(Erickson did not name the representatives calling him, although Representative Joe Walsh (R-IL) confirmed that his office gets advice from Erickson.)
Erickson's advice is aggressively partisan. Two weeks ago he assured House Republicans that the political fallout from an economically catastrophic default would fall on President Obama, writing:
"As I pointed out to John Boehner yesterday, despite what the pundits in Washington are telling you, it is you and not Obama who hold most of the cards. Obama has a legacy to worry about. Should the United States lose its bond rating, it will be called the 'Obama Depression'. Congress does not get pinned with this stuff."
In other words Erickson was encouraging Republicans to destroy the economy on the grounds that it would redound to their political benefit.
How did someone whose only experience in public office has been serving on the Macon, Georgia, city council become an advisor to national Republicans? It's important to understand that Erickson isn't just a blogger. "He's an activist and a media figure," says one Republican consultant. "Describing him as a blogger is inadequate." Although Erickson's rise from obscurity was through Red State, he has a much larger media footprint than just its 178,000 monthly visitors and one million monthly page views. Since April 2010 Erickson has been a regular contributor to CNN. He replaced Herman Cain as host of Cain's radio show, popular among conservatives, when the former Godfather's Pizza CEO began his presidential campaign. He also frequently guest hosts for conservative radio host Neal Boortz, meaning Erickson broadcasts for five hours daily.
The other point is that Erickson doesn't use his blog as a mere forum for opining, much less conveying information. Erickson is an activist and media is his vessel. In some ways that makes him analogous liberals such as Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos blog, and Jane Hamsher who runs Firedoglake. But Hamsher and Moulitsas weren't getting calls from Democrats in Congress begging them for dispensation to vote for a bill that is terrible for Democratic priorities. "I'm not nearly as plugged-in as him," says Hamsher.
Why does Erickson have more influence than his counterparts on the left? One reason is the strength of his army. Just as liberal bloggers targeted Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Erickson has gotten involved in Republican primaries. Although his success was mixed, a few high-profile victories, such as helping Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio defeat Florida's moderate Republican Governor Charlie Crist for Senate, have made Republican politicians respect his power. "When you take out senators, you become a force," says Hamsher. "[Red State] has a track record now."
Erickson also benefits from the legitimacy and megaphone that a mainstream media platform such as CNN confers. "It gives him gravitas when he's on two to three times per week," Hamsher says.
Also Erickson occupies a position inside the conservative echo chamber: his "Morning Briefing" 5 am e-mail has about 70,000 subscribers and he is cited by prominent personalities such as Rush Limbaugh. When Erickson counter-intuitively declared Democrat Bill Owen's special election victory in NY-23 "a huge win for conservatives" because "the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives" it became a widespread notion on the right.
Like many right wing pundits, Erickson is prone to disturbing outbursts. He said that he would "pull out my wife's shotgun and see how that little ACS twerp likes being scared at the door," instead of filling out the American Community Survey. He also complained that "Barack Obama's brownshirts are after Glenn Beck" after Beck called Obama a racist.
One unnamed Republican leadership aide told the Washington Post that "He certainly doesn't have the influence of the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, [website] Hot Air or the National Review." But that might be wishful thinking because the Journal's editorial page and The Weekly Standard are loyal partisan servants of the GOP. They both urged House Republicans to pass Boehner's bill.
Sure enough, when Boehner, Senate leaders and President Obama came to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling while cutting more than $2 trillion in spending, with no increase in tax revenues, Erickson split from the conservative media establishment again. Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, called it "a victory for the Tea Party." But Erickson was underwhelmed and said he could not support it. "Keep track of who on the right votes against it," Erickson wrote. "They'll be the real heroes."
So will Erickson and Tea Party conservative leaders, who worked together to elect insurgent extremist Republicans such as Kentucky's Rand Paul, accept this as a victory or will they seek to exact revenge on the leadership and the members who voted for it? (The deal passed the House 269-161, all but ninety-five of those voting for it were Republicans.)
Perhaps Erickson will realize that he can't punish 174 Republicans. That concession to reality may disappoint Tea Party activists, who expected dramatic change from such unlikely figures as John Boehner, the veteran business-toady they installed as Speaker of the House. But as liberals can tell them, winning an election and getting what you want are two very different things.


text:
Michael W. Chunn
Coordinator of Graduate Studies
Office: MSP, E104
Office Phone: (330) 672-9234
E-mail: email@example.com
Degree Offerings
Graduate programs in music lead to the degrees Master of Music, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Philosophy, all of which are accredited by The National Association of Schools of Music.
Program Options
Master of Music (M.M.)
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Kent State University Graduate Admissions Application
Music Performance Certificate and Master's degree applicants in performance and conducting must audition in their major performing medium. Students planning a major in Performance (vocal or instrumental) and Conducting will be expected to demonstrate ability on the level of the Bachelor of Music in Performance senior recital.
Kent State University Graduate Catalog
Audition Guidelines
For students residing at an inconvenient distance from Kent, an audition tape may be sent to the Coordinator of Graduate Studies in the School of Music. It should contain up to thirty minutes of material covering a variety of performance styles (and language for vocalists). A list of repertoire studied in the past year should accompany the tape or be brought to the audition. Students desiring a return of the audition tape should enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
While it is not required for admission, students applying to the Master of Arts and doctoral programs, who are planning to study applied music, must audition.
Graduate Audition Requirements
Music Theory Placement Examination
All entering master's and doctoral students (except for the online Music Education program) take an entrance examination in music theory. The examination must be taken before the start of enrollment in a graduate degree program. Graduate theory coursework required as a result of this examination will be counted toward the degree requirements. Students may retake the examination once.
The examination is given in August and January.
Music Theory Saturday, August 29, 2015 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. E-202
Music Theory Saturday, January 16, 2016 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. E-202
All entering graduate students must take the Music Theory Placement Examination before beginning their program of study.
Graduate Assistantships
The Hugh A. Glauser offers graduate assistantships in applied music, band, choral conducting, ethnomusicology, graduate string quartet, music education, piano and theory. Students interested in a graduate assistantship must submit an application. Please contact the Coordinator of Graduate Studies in the School of Music for further information regarding graduate assistantships.


text:
Every year, we here at Camaro Performers magazine look forward to putting together the February issue. It's the one time we get to revisit each and every Camaro featured in these pages from the previous year. We then compile a list of the top 20 Camaros based not only on the editorial staff's choices, but this year, for the first time, we are using input from our readers and Facebook followers. We then painstakingly whittled it down to the best 11 and called it good. Now we didn't blatantly ask which Camaros you felt should make our list, but we took into account the feedback we received from your emails and Facebook likes and comments.
One thing to keep in mind is that the top Camaros were not chosen based on how much money was spent on building the car, but a number of other factors came into consideration - craftsmanship and build quality, horsepower rating, and how much the owner drives the car are all taken into account. But the major decision-making factor boils down to how cool the car looks. Of course, compiling a "Best of" list is subjective, so your ideas of what makes a Camaro cool may differ from ours. And we want to hear about it, so email us at email@example.com or head on over to either facebook.com/camaroperformers or twitter.com/camaroperform to post your comments.
So with the ground rules somewhat laid out, here are the best Camaros from 2012.
Issue: February 2012
Car: 1969 Z/28 Camaro
Owner: Derek Trulson
Photos: Henry Z. DeKuyper
Oftentimes, Camaro owners go well beyond the call of duty when performing a period-correct restoration, and they'll do so at any cost. Such was the case when Derek Trulson found this '69 Z/28. It started out as a somewhat plain Jane example, but Derek wanted to construct a Camaro that could have been built as an extreme Trans-Am track fiend from back in the day. A car that some of those passionate gearheads from GM would have built and sold as a super-hopped-up, out-the-back-door hot rod. Derek took extreme measures to acquire the heavy-duty suspension components and sway bars, and other extra beefy components not everyone knows exist. Although fairly expensive, the cross-ram manifold and correct carbs are still attainable, but Derek's obsession for building an awesome '60s skunkworks-style muscle car was carried out to the extent to what you see here.
Between your emails and social media feedback, this car was an easy pick for our Best of list.
Issue: April 2012
Car: 2000 Z28 Camaro
Owner: Scott Massey
Photos: Nick Licata
Hit any dragstrip these days and there's a good chance you'll run into quite a few fourth-gens. Some fast, some clean, but the odds somewhat diminish when it comes to finding one that's just as fast as it is clean. Scott Massey likes his stuff looking good and he prefers to go down the strip quickly. The car is armed with a Nasty Nate's Performance-built iron-block LS stroked to 4.00 inches and bored 4.005 over for a total of 403 cubic inches. Scott is continually tinkering with his stellar Monterey Maroon F-body, and last we heard the car is running low 9's in the quarter.
This is one fourth-gen that is well deserving of our Best of issue.
Issue: May 2012
Car: 2010 SS Camaro
Owner: Yancy Johns
Photos: Robert McGaffin/Steven Rupp
Many of you readers might recognize CP/28 as the long-term Camaro Performers magazine fifth-gen project car. We started out with the intention of only doing a few engine and suspension bolt-on upgrades, but we just couldn't control ourselves and ended up building a blown 416 beast that belts out 651 hp and 660 lb-ft to the tires. We treated the '10 RS/SS to a Magnuson TVS supercharger, JBA headers and exhaust system, then overhauled the suspension with DSE components, armed it with a Centerforce twin-disc clutch, and bolted up a set of rollers from Boze. We then had Mike Norris of Norris Motorsports tune the thing up and finally let the owner of the car, Yancy Johns, get behind the wheel. Upon releasing the clutch, his initial comments were a bit too coarse to print, but let's just say he is now having quite a bit of fun with it. You can see the car in action on various episodes of SPEED Channel's new automotive reality show Are you Faster Than a Redneck? in 2013.
You could say this was our "in-house" pick, but with all the positive email we received on this car, there's no doubt it's well deserving of making our Best of issue.
Issue: May 2012
Car: 2002 SS Camaro
Owner: Greg Edwards
Photos: Henry Z. DeKuyper
Greg Edwards first spotted this '02 Camaro making some stout runs at Byron Dragway, in Byron, Illinois, and was instantly smitten. And once he found out it was totally streetable with low miles and for sale, he was hell-bent on being the next owner. Once in his hands, he had JAMR Racing Engines bore and stroke it up to 396 ci then put some extra life into it with a T76 Turbonetics twin-turbo system set at 27 psi of boost. Now bursting at the seams, the fourth-gen is hammering out about 1,240 hp and 1,000 lb-ft of torque, good enough for 8.60 e.t.'s at over 165 mph in the quarter. Believe it or not, Greg feels the car has a somewhat "sleeper" look to it. We suppose that's true until you have a gander under the hood. What lies between the framerails is a dead giveaway that this car means serious business.
Fast cars may be considered "dime a dozen," but the fact that Greg's SS is in such immaculate condition, this Sunset Orange Metallic Camaro is absolutely Best of material.
Issue: June 2012
Car: 1970 Camaro
Owner: Dave Leisinger
Photos: Josh Mishler
When talking about purpose-built Camaros for our Best of issue, we'd have to go with this '70 constructed by the guys at Lakeside Rods and Rides for Dave Leisinger. Dave and his wife, Karen, had this car built with one thing in mind: to kick-ass on the autocross. "The Professor" Warren Johnson had a hand in the engine build, which the Leisinger's had set back 12 inches for better weight distribution. Belting out a blistering 760 hp should be plenty, if not overkill, for any autocross, but that's just how the Leisinger's roll. The car features DSE suspension front and rear and Baer 6S calipers grip 14-inch rotors. Boze Mesh wheels wrapped in Falken Azenis rubber reside on all four corners. Anything but contemporary, the interior features an aluminum scene reminiscent of a 1947 P-47 Thunderbolt fighter. Although the car is built solely for track duty, The Crusher as it's aptly named, is totally at home in a car show atmosphere.
Yes, it's that nice, and it's just the kind of ride that belongs in our Best of issue.
Issue: June 2012
Car: 1980 Z28 Camaro
Owner: Bill Hronis
Photos: Robert McGaffin
We're always on the prowl for later-model second-gens to feature in the mag, so when we heard about Bill Hronis' '80 Z28 street machine from the gang over at G-Force Design Concepts in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, we knew it was Camaro Performers magazine material. It's the sort of Camaro that just about any muscle car enthusiast can relate to. Its big-block (572ci) reeks of kick-ass "blue collar" horsepower that belts out 850 hp and 700 lb-ft. With its killer stance, 15-year-old paintjob that's stood the test of time, and aggressive demeanor, this is one Camaro that just can't be ignored.
So we didn't. Congratulations to Bill Hronis for making our Best of issue.


text:
We Have Band delivers a dope remix to Peter Bjorn & John's track called "It Don't Move Me" off of their latest album titled *Living Thing*! Check it out! Peter Bjorn & John – "It Don't... Read more »
We Have Band – You Came Out (Official Music Video) from We Have Band on Vimeo. This is pretty cool & bugged out @ the same time. New video from We Have Band called "You Came... Read more »


text:
FOUND: '66 Corvette coupe, 350hp 327, four-speed, posi, telescopic steering, teak steering wheel, power windows, leather interior, and A/C. My girlfriend, Cheryl, and I went dancing one night and decided to join an older couple that we knew. At some point in the evening, the conversation turned to cars, and my friend Buzz asked if I needed any parts for my Corvette. He had a wrecked '74 that was for sale. I told him I didn't really need anything from a '74, but I would like to take a look at the car. I then asked, "What else do you have?" Buzz replied, "Well, there is another Corvette in the barn that has been sitting for over 20 years or so. I don't remember what year it is, and I haven't looked at it or even talked about it for years."
What Buzz had was a very nicely optioned `66 Corvette coupe with a 350hp 327, four-speed, posi, telescopic steering, teak steering wheel, power windows, leather interior, and A/C. The car had been wrecked and placed in the barn in 1978-- the same year I graduated from high school. I decided to buy the car.
I found out the owner at the time ofthe accident was Jerry Winnepenninkx. With the help of the Internet, I tracked him down, just 20 miles away. He was quite excited and surprised when I called to tell him that I had his old Corvette. He had always wondered what had happened to the car.


text:
What Should I Do Next? (Contest CLOSED)
This contest is now closed.
I have chosen Monesterlego as the winner. (design below.)
Thank you all for entering and I will do this again! (Maybe for more prizes!!!)
NEW CONTEST HERE!!! (Ends: August 10,2012.)
Also, you could put a darth vader mask on him, put an apron on him and have him hold a spatula, or make him into a viking with one of those horned helmets and an ax or something. Oooh - have you done superman yet?
Was I only supposed to post one thing? ;-)
2. Legs
3. Hair
4. Clothes, I recommend you...
Which, roughly translates into: You have an intelligent way of picking your nose. (an international insult from the Internation Insult Dictionary).
I remember: fenster (window) and papierkorb (wastePaper basket) along with a smattering of incidental words (das ist = that is, etc). Hardly enough to help me get on anyone's good graces over there :-)
In Klingon, 'etlh is a sword
po' = skilled
and 'Iw = blood :-)
again, not realy enough to communicate much of anything to anyone.


text:
Most of the time, the story of how a story is made is boring. The Great Story Birthing often takes one of the two following forms:
- The Hollywood Version: I, THE GENIUS, shout EUREKA! while I'm in the middle of a shower, abandon the tub for my study and a pad of paper, and, shower still running, pen an entire story in one sitting.
- The More Often Version: I, THE GENIUS, shout EUREKA! while I'm in the middle of my shower, abandon the tub for my study and a pad of paper, remember that I most often write on a laptop, eagerly tap out five brilliant lines, go eat
a slice ofan entire box of pizza, forget about the story, return to it a week later, try again, hate myself for not being a better writer, eat an entire box of pizza, and repeat this cycle for several years until something finally manages to reach a somewhat conclusive ending, oftentimes because my house is at that point flooded and I have other things to take care of.
Sometimes, though, a story is something you carry with you throughout your life — something that grows as you grow, both personally and as a writer who goes from thinking ALL SENTENCES ARE COOL to knowing the precise rhythm and feel that make her heart sing.
And that, friends, is the story of the story I've just had published on InfectiveInk.com, And How the Algae Twines!
The first time I wrote this story, I was a sophomore in college, staring out my dorm window at the shifting snow drifts howling across the campus quad, thinking of another time when the world was also made of snow and I could feel my first real relationship reaching its zenith and beginning its long, slow descent into the frozen ground. The result: a creative short essay, and the feeling that I wasn't done.
The second time I wrote this story, I was mored on the shores of a criticism-ridden grad school workshop, trying to be a better writer than I felt I could be. Somehow, I stumbled upon this old essay, languishing in an ancient Word file, and found myself horrified at my use of language, yet intrigued by the thoughts, images and emotions that lay behind it. I returned to my keyboard, and tried to remember what it was to feel. The result: a thirty page behemoth, with ten pages of striking imagery, ten pages of a writer reaching for a moral, and ten pages of a 24-year-old woman, demanding her true experiences find an outlet. And a workshop with an excess of praise and an excess of criticism that would change my writing forever.
The third time I wrote this story, I had been torn down to my core. There were no safe places left — not for me, not for my work. Everything I did was wrong. There was no warm hearth upon which I could nestle. After so many years of fighting for independence, I was on my own and barely able to breathe. Left with the few words that meant something to me. The few words that wouldn't leave me alone.
It's been three years since the third time. Three years, and this story has won awards, and finally found publication. The joy of finally seeing this story in print…well, I can't quite put that into words. Nor can I promise I won't write this story a fourth time, as I navigate the shriveled climes of my very non-snowy setting. But I can say that the story of this story — this story that began nine years ago and continues on — is one I will carry with me, wherever I go. This story has not left me.
You can read And How the Algae Twines at InfectiveInk.com.


text:
No minimum purchase. First time buyers only. Click here to activate.
with Auto Delivery on this and all future orders of this item with our
Simplify Life automatic delivery program!
Click here for details.
Nothing reduces shedding like FURminator Professional Pet Products deShedding Tools. No rake, brush or comb comes close. Now deShedding Tools are precision-designed for every pet size and hair length for faster, more efficient deShedding every time.
Click Here - For a video demonstration of the FURminator
Country of Origin: USA
Manufacturer: Furminator
Sizing Chart
The reviews below are presented for informational purposes only and are not intended as an endorsement of any product. The information is not intended to be a substitute for visits to your local veterinarian. Instead, these testimonials offer the reader information and opinions written by pet owners and/or veterinarians concerning animal health and products that they have used.
(based on 11 reviews)
Ratings Distribution
5 Stars
4 Stars
3 Stars
2 Stars
1 Stars
of respondents would recommend this to a friend.
Best Uses
Reviewed by 11 customers
Sort by
Displaying reviews 1-10
Back to top
Previous | Next »
I comletely disagree with (useless)
By Walt-The Dog Lover for life!
from Thornbury Township, PA.
About Me Long-time Pet Owner
Comments about FURminator deShedding Dog Tool:
Hello All,Felt the need to explain having a completely different opinion then the person labeled as (USELESS)I disagree 110%!!I have had a large model for my 8 1/2 year old Chocolate Labrador. I have had her since 9 weeks old. As one might know first obvious they have short hair and not only that they have second under coat as well being a water dog. I also have a large 45 lbs. German Shepherd since 8 weeks old and now only 5 1/2 months old with obviously longer hair. As for the large model FURminator deShedding Tool it works excellent on both of my dogs. As for my Labrador having short hair this brush works great especially having that second under coat. Unreal but the shorter hair Lab sheds a lot more then a the longer hair Shepherd! The brush is also great for the dogs skin & coat, reason being it also keeps the dogs skin pores open to breath much better! Trust me I have been using the same one on my Labrador and now my new Shepherd.This brush works still as good as I bought it over 5 years ago. I HIGHLY recommend for all dog owners with short or long hair you will love it and wish you owned one long ago as I did ! It will cut down the dog hair in your home by at least half and rid all the dead hair as well!!
Bottom Line Yes, I would recommend this to a friend
Was this review helpful? Yes / No
- You may also flag this review
Comment on this review
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
Awesome Tool
By Dog Lover
from Upstate NY
I thought the old shedding blade I was using was fine, but not after I tried the FURminator. I couldn't believe how much more loose hair I was able to remove. My dog even likes this better than the old one. She rolls over and wants me to use it on her belly. I guess it feels good to her. Anything that gets her to enjoy our grooming sessions more makes me happy.
By Kehaulanih
from collegeville, pa
The absolute BEST in brushing hair and removing dead hair! You don't have to work so hard to get the results you want. Just let the natural weight of the brush sit on the coat and from the scruff of the neck, pull the brush back towards the tail. As you go on and on, you'll get deeper and deeper into your pooch's coat and you'll get all that hair that needs to get gone! You'll love those results!
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
OMG! Can't Live Without
By dangeruss
from Pennslyvania
I have two big shedders (lab and terrier) and after paying a professional groomer an extra $15 to use the Furminator and seeing the results and how long the results lasted, I was impressed. I ordered two right away, one big and one small, and have been living in a happy shed-free zone for months now!
Great product
By German shepherd owner
from Iowa
Furminator does a wonderful job of effectively getting rid of loose hair. After using it as little as once a week, i have a drastic reduction of my pets hair in the house. I had tried other solutions before, but none compare to this!
By GSD Pro Trainer
from Oscoda, MI
About Me Professional Pet Trainer
Brush my German shepherd service dog every day-Furminator removes more fur than any product Ive bought in last 45yrs! Takes place of 5 different brushes I was using. Astonished how great it works! Will recommend to all my clients & dog friends.
Can't live without this
By elynn
from Indianapolis, IN
I have a german shepherd with bad allergies, so she sheds constantly and more often than most dogs. Before the furminator I was using two tools - an undercoat comb and then a top coat brush. With the furminator, it's the only tool I need to use and gets out SO much more hair than anything I've ever used before. I would highly recommend it to any pet owner.
(3 of 3 customers found this review helpful)
By lynda the gardener
from boston, ma
Bought it because description said great for long hair dogs. It's not. Back to using a simple rake and or comb & slicker brush.
Bottom Line No, I would not recommend this to a friend
Works so well!
By Buddy's Mom
from Coatesville, PA
This product is awesome! Two friends -- one with a dog and one with a cat -- recommended it to me. Buddy doesn't like being brushed, but sits still for this brush longer than most. Best of all, it gets out TONS of hair! I can't wait to see how much less hair I'll have to vacuum off the floor from now on. Thank you, Furminator!
No more fur
By Grandma
from Magnolia, TX
Very easy to use - my dogs don't mind it a bit except when used on their undersides. It tends to "pull" a little.
© 2015 Only Natural Pet LLC - All Rights Reserved


text:
Find hotels in Belle Chasse using the list and search tools below. Explore our guide for inexpensive and discount hotel/motel rates in or near Belle Chasse, LA for your business or personal leisure travel. We show the best Belle Chasse Louisiana hotel rooms. Review the Belle Chasse hotel list below to find the perfect lodging. We also have a map of the Belle Chasse hotels.The Belle Chasse center point is around 5 miles from Oakwood Mall and 5 miles from Chalmette National Cemetery.
Belle Chasse Hotels, Motels & Accommodations
Next 20 Belle Chasse Hotels > [1 - 20 of 50]
Next: See My Belle Chasse Hotels with Pricing >


text:
Certificate in Biblical Studies
This program is for those who want to develop skills and methods for engaging in sound and thoughtful interpretation of the Bible for use in ministry or mission settings or as a firm foundation as they pursue a variety of careers in the marketplace.
More videos:
Career Fields
The Certificate in Biblical Studies is designed for students who wish to delve into the content and message of the Bible. In their Bible classes students will be introduced to the field of biblical studies that includes the ancillary disciplines of history, culture, archaeology, hermeneutics, and literary studies. Students will also be exposed to Arts and Science classes that will broaden their knowledge of humanity and the world around them. The program offers enough flexibility for students to follow and discover their passions and interests. This one year of study is intended to help students grow in their biblical knowledge while gaining a better understanding of themselves so as to lead them into further studies or new directions.
Program Requirements
(30 credit hours)
Required Courses
(15 credit hours)
Humanities and Social Sciences
(6 credit hours)
David Miller
David completed a PhD in Religious Studies at McMaster University in 2004, the same year he began teaching at Briercrest College and Seminary. As a scholar and a teacher, David's basic priorities are studying the New Testament in its first-century Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts and learning with students what it means to hear and respond to the Bible's address to Christians today.
Growing up in Kenya as a child of missionary parents gave David a love for international travel. He and Tenyia were married on a semester break during a year of study in Israel, and they recently spent a vacation visiting archaeological sites in Turkey. David returned to Israel in 2009 as one of the leaders of Briercrest College and Seminary's first Israel Study Tour. David, along with Kevin Daugherty, led another Briercrest study tour in the summer of 2013, "Following Paul in Turkey and Greece."
In his free time, David enjoys hiking, playing with his daughter Shoshana, and reading in his back yard under the amazing Saskatchewan sky.
Don Taylor
Don grew up in Ontario, and after high school and some job experience, he joined the RCMP and was stationed in B.C. Don married Tracy and they raised two children, Brad and Katie. After ten years in the RCMP and six years of youth ministry in local churches, Don came to Briercrest to study. While studying at both the college and seminary and taking on the task of policing in Caronport, Don was hired to teach part-time for the college and has been doing so for over 10 years. Through this time, he completed a doctoral degree with the University of South Africa, completing a dissertation entitled: A Narrative Critical Analysis of Korah's Rebellion in Numbers 16 and 17. Don has also traveled to Israel and was part of organizing two academic study tours to the Holy Land in 2009 and 2011.