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Strong winds have been pounding most of our viewing area all Thursday long and Oswego County is bracing for the worst, with heavy snow expected for Thursday night. Our Candace Hopkins has more from Oswego.
OSWEGO, N.Y. – Oswego experienced very high winds and waves were crashing over the break wall. Some of these gusts have been up to 60 miles per hour and at times, it is simply hard to stand up.
It may look bad now, but we're told the worst of the weather is actually on the way. A lake effect band of snow is headed this way. We're told that at times it will be very heavy.
The band of snow was hovering over the Jefferson and Oswego County line Thursday afternoon, but when it does arrive in the Oswego area later Thursday, some areas will receive over a foot or more of snow. Obviously this area is no stranger to wind and snow, but the YNN weather team says these conditions could be blizzard-like conditions at the height of the storm and that's why county officials are saying if you don't have anywhere you have to be tonight, don't go out.
"High winds are very hard to drive in. If you have to go out, be very careful and know what the weather is not only where you are, but also where you are going, because certainly conditions from one side of the county to the other can change, especially when you're talking lake effect snow," said Oswego County Emergency Management Acting Director Terry Bennett.
A lake effect snow warning is in effect through Friday at 6 p.m.


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text: Throughout history, man has adjusted and even dismissed the guidance God gives in His Word in order to accommodate his own way of life. Don't break the heart of God by allowing indifference to His Word keep you from living the life He wants for you. Seek the heart of God for His guidance and plan for your life rather than the spirits of this world whose goal is to kill and destroy.


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Nokia and HTC mock Samsung Galaxy S5 launch (badly)
Every day, I try to keep up with which gadget manufacturer especially dislikes another.
I know that everyone mocks Apple because of its smugness and/or their own envy.
I also know that Microsoft thinks Google is stinkily hoodwinking the world's populations with its alleged Scroogley spying.
But here we are, with Samsung unveiling its latest testament to its largesse and largeness, and two rivals take to Twitter to sniff mightily in its face.
HTC, a company with some nice phones, but not without its own problems, tweeted: "Buyer's remorse: Coming soon to S5 owners. March 25.&… Read more


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Mud Flaps
Posted 17 January 2013 - 09:08 AM
was toying with the idea of getting some but not sure if they are any good or worth the money.
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Posted 17 January 2013 - 09:19 AM
Ive had genuine ford flaps fitted and they were good, reduced road spray and noise,has anyone had mud flaps fitted to there focus.
was toying with the idea of getting some but not sure if they are any good or worth the money.
But since fitting the ZetecS body kit, ive upgrade to a custom set try NCC on the main forum page they supply ford parts from stock piles for less than RRP.
Posted 17 January 2013 - 01:11 PM
Posted 17 January 2013 - 02:08 PM
During the miserable months where your either wet, or cold, they are brilliant, help to keep your car clean, cant say I ever noticed a reduction in road noise though as Lenny suggested but I had the mk2 not the 2.5.
The one downside, whenever I drove down a curb (we ALWAYS have to park on the curb on the roadside at home) the curb always grabbed the flap and it bit into the paintwork. I had slight gouges in the body work when I eventually took them off! so you may want to consider this if you find yourself regularly on the curb...
Posted 17 January 2013 - 04:38 PM
Also heard about the clips can be a bit hard to get on.
Posted 17 January 2013 - 06:14 PM
Posted 17 January 2013 - 06:23 PM
That sort ^
they do stop spray up the sides, and for some reason even the boot!
they seem secure enough even just put on with 4 wood screw type things in the arch, iv grounded them out plenty and theyre fine!
Posted 17 January 2013 - 07:41 PM
Posted 17 January 2013 - 07:49 PM
easy to fit and align and as they stick out a bit it stops a lot of crap going onto the car. it came with fitting instructions and all the fitting bits. oh, i got them for £30 at Ford Fair.
Posted 17 January 2013 - 08:30 PM
i used to have a pair on my mk2 fiesta but not sure they still do them now
Posted 12 October 2013 - 04:47 PM
I'd prefer p***-flaps on mine lol
Posted 12 October 2013 - 05:50 PM
wouldnt be without my custom set... can be used on standard models aswel as zetec s and the st!!
definatley worth having especially with the winter months coming!!
Posted 12 October 2013 - 05:53 PM
theyre a tenner a pair on fleabay
Posted 12 October 2013 - 06:58 PM
only problem i found with ebay ones is that they were not wide enough to cover the tyre width... the ones in the link i posted provide a custom made bracket so that the mudflaps sit out further, covering the whole tyre...
i dont know if the tyrse are different width on standard models? mine is the zs with 17" alloys
Posted 13 October 2013 - 11:24 AM
i bought a set of genuine flaps from ford they where a bit expensive but worth it imo.
as the winter months set in they should stop a lot of spray and muck on the side and they will also stop stone chips on the doors.
when the salt goes down it will protect the sides a bit to I hope.
so imo worth every penny
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As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your members of Congress and ask that they vote NO on any "clean" debt ceiling increase.
It is irresponsible to increase our national debt without also enacting serious spending reforms that put us on a credible path to a balanced budget. Even with last year's massive tax hikes and tiny sequester cuts currently shrinking the deficit, the federal government is still projected to add another half trillion dollars to our $17 trillion national debt just this year alone, and within a few years we'll be right back to running trillion dollar deficits all over again. On our current course, the national debt will swell to an unfathomable $27 trillion in ten years. We are playing with fiscal fire, courting a debt-induced economic collapse. Just as a well-run bank must eventually refuse to increase the credit limit on a spending addict's credit card, Congress must deny the federal government more credit until it agrees to a plan to balance its books.
One simple way to solve the current spending crisis is simply to stop increasing spending. This isn't rocket science, but Washington insiders seem to take for granted that our spending simply must increase each and every year. Simply spending exactly what we've budgeted for this year – and not one dollar more – over the next few years would result in a balanced budget by 2017.
Stopping spending increases would take some real reforms – including changes to the "big three" entitlement programs (Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid). No one ever said getting federal spending under control would be easy. But the alternative is a deficit that we may find impossible to control without massive economic and financial disruptions for millions of Americans. We can no longer afford to kick the can down the road. The time to begin reigning in out-of-control spending is right now.
For these reasons, I urge you to call your representative and senators, and ask them to vote NO on a clean debt ceiling increase. We will count their vote as a KEY VOTE when calculating FreedomWorks' Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2014. The Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of Congress who consistently vote to support economic freedom.
Matt Kibbe
President and CEO
The House of Representatives has approved several bills that would limit and change the way the federal government regulates businesses. The Republican-backed measures were all passed by largely party-line votes; none are seen as likely to be enacted into law.
The legislation underscores "an increasingly symbolic thrust of legislation as Congress heads toward midterm elections," NPR's David Welna reports for our Newscast unit.
"This is an opportunity for us to show the American people that we are committed to restoring the trust in government," GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor said today.
Those are warm, soothing words to the ears of free market fans but...they are just words. True, they are words in legislation, but it is legislation that will never be passed.
The promise from leadership is that once the GOP retakes the Senate then these moves will be less symbolic and more likely to become law. That only holds true if there is a majority that can override vetoes from President Super Pen, which isn't likely.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Mitch McConnell telegraphed the fact that he plans on being thoroughly useless until at least January of 2017.
Look, the problem is, we have a Democratic Senate. Fifty-five Democrats, 45 Republicans – we have a math problem. So, achieving the goal that we all would love to achieve is simply not attainable in the absence of relief at the polls with the American people flipping the Senate and then hopefully giving us a new president.
So the next time we have a hammerlock on the Executive and Legislative branches, we will finally start achieving something, according to the prophecy or something.
The problems on the regulatory front are many. Each new law to make our lives "better" brings with it some sort of federal oversight. Obamacare alone practically creates a separate federal mothership hovering over our lives and ready to attack.
And the Republicans don't have much of a small government track record in recent decades, even when they've had the majority. Many of the Republicans in Congress squawking about reduced regulation now participated in Medicaid expansion and a variety of other enlargements of the federal bureaucratic behemoth.
The expansion of that behemoth's reach always include layers of new regulations. And, as history informs us with countless examples, once the federal government is allowed to beef up, it doesn't do so well with dieting.
Sweeping changes are needed in Washington, but not just regarding regulation and legislation. We need to elect politicians who have the temerity to fight now for things that affect the future. The recent debt ceiling battles have been pathetic displays of purely political, short term you-know-what covering. The press and the politicians involved talked about tactics, elections, gridlock, Ted Cruz and a host of other things during the "debates". The one thing none of the people in charge seriously discussed?
The crippling debt.
In perfect world, we could elect a majority that didn't care about reelection and would go all "scorched earth" while attacking hyper-regulation.
In an even more perfect world, that majority would get reelected after doing so.
Appreciate the thought.
Capitol Hill Update, 10 February, 2014
House & Senate/Schedule: Both chambers are in session this week. Both will recess on Wednesday and leave town through the 24th of February, unless an agreement is reached on the debt ceiling.
Legislative Highlight of the Week: The suspension of the debt ceiling officially ended on February 7th, meaning that the Treasury Department is once again back to using "extraordinary measures" to fund federal spending until the limit is increased once more. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew estimates that funding will run out near the end of February. Democrats want a "clean" debt ceiling hike, while some Republicans are debating what reforms they may demand in return for the increase.
House/Financial Services: The main bill on the floor of the House this week will be H.R. 3193, the Consumer Financial Protection and Soundness Act. Sponsored by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), this bill attempts to rein in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the major new regulatory bodies created under the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill of 2010. Currently this agency has essentially no oversight by Congress, and this bill would at least reform the CFPB by making it an independent executive agency headed by a board of five members – all subject to Congressional approval – rather than being headed by one individual.
House/IRS Targeting: The House Committee on Ways & Means will be marking up H.R. 3865, the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act. Sponsored by Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI), this bill would stop the IRS from finalizing its proposed regulations that would prevent 501(c)4 non-profit groups from having any voice in the political process. This would mean that a great many tea party and 9/12 groups, along with many of the larger D.C. non-profits, would be not allowed to conduct voter education or registration, hold candidate forums, or even mention the name of any candidate actively up for election. FreedomWorks strongly supports Camp's bill – you can see our letter of support HERE.
Senate/Veterans' Benefits: The Senate may vote this week on a bill that would restore funding for Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) increases on veterans' benefits, which were cut in the Ryan/Murray budget and omnibus deal last month. Although cutting veteran compensation was clearly not the wisest choice when looking for spending cuts, the bigger point is that even the limited cuts that were promised in the deal are already under attack, as we predicted they would be.
Capitol Hill Update, 10 February, 2014House & Senate/Schedule: Both chambers are in session this week. Both will recess on Wednesday and leave town through the 24th of February, unless an agreement is reached on the debt ceiling.
When Washington raised the debt ceiling this week, the Beltway media breathlessly reported that the fiscal crisis had ended. Lawyers danced in hallways, bureaucrats twerked on the Metro, congressional aides kissed strangers in the streets — the Tea Party has been defeated! It was like VJ day for wonks.
As our political class exchanged high fives and reporters praised a return to "sanity," I wondered how these odd creatures defined insanity.
America's fiscal crisis is not that our debt ceiling was too low, the fiscal crisis is that our debt is too high. When I mentioned this to left-leaning folks, they seemed indifferent. "Obama lowered the deficit." "I think Bush spent more." "It's Reagan's fault!"
So I made this infographic:
Since most graphs look like this, I focused on just three big numbers: Deficit, revenue and debt.
The analogy is imperfect, but imagine the green is your salary, the yellow is the amount you're spending over your salary, and the red is your Visa statement. Then imagine your spouse runs into the room and shouts, "great news honey, our fiscal crisis is over. We just got approved for a new MasterCard!" Your first call would be to a marriage counselor or a shrink.
The chart is brutally bipartisan. Debt increased under Republican presidents and Democrat presidents. It increased under Democrat congresses and Republican congresses. In war and in peace, in boom times and in busts, after tax hikes and tax cuts, the Potomac filled with red ink.
Washington likes to talk about sustainability. Forget sustainable — how is this sane?
Yet when a conservative hesitates before raising the debt ceiling, he's portrayed as a madman. When Paul Ryan offers a thoughtful plan to reduce the debt over decades, he's pushing grannies into the Grand Canyon and pantsing park rangers on the way out.
Since posting this chart to Twitter, the reaction has been intense. Some on the right think I'm too tough on the GOP while those on the left say it doesn't matter or it's all a big lie. Others tell me that I should have weighted for this variable or added lines for that trend. They are free to create their own charts to better fit their narrative and I'm sure they will. But the numbers shown above can't be spun by either side.
Math doesn't care about fairness or good intentions. Spending vastly more than you have isn't good when done by a Republican or a Democrat. Two plus two doesn't equal 33.2317 after you factor in a secret "Social Justice" multiplier. And if our current president accumulates debt at the rate of his first four-plus years, the national debt will be $22 trillion by the time leaves office.
So post this chart to Facebook, Pinterest or on your local grocery store's bulletin board. If enough people see it, maybe — just maybe — those who want to increase the debt will be viewed as the "crazy" ones.
Follow Jon on Twitter at @ExJon.
When Washington raised the debt ceiling this week, the Beltway media breathlessly reported that the fiscal crisis had ended. Lawyers danced in hallways, bureaucrats twerked on the Metro, congressional aides kissed strangers in the streets — the Tea Party has been defeated! It was like VJ day for wonks.
Congress made President Obama a temporary king the other day.
And the crown was placed upon his head by none other than the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell.
No joke.
On October 16th, Congress passed, and the following day the president signed into law, a bill (H.R.2775) to temporarily suspend the U.S. Government's statutory debt limit and also temporarily shift Congress's borrowing power to the president.
For the next three months, there will effectively be no way to limit the growth of the U.S. national debt.
The president will have unlimited power to borrow on the credit of the United States.
This is unprecedented.
It's not just a danger to our economy, it's also unconstitutional in principle, and an alarming step toward monarchy.
The good news is it's temporary. It will expire on February 8th. It should not be renewed.
The "McConnell Mechanism," as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein has dubbed it, was quietly slipped into the debt ceiling bill with no public discussion or warning.
The Mechanism gives the president the ability to increase the debt without limit while giving Congress a new, streamlined parliamentary procedure with which to try to block the move.
In the event the president decides to borrow more money than Congress thinks acceptable, Congress can try to check him by passing a special "resolution of disapproval" using expedited procedures. The resolution is a law, like any other. If it passes, the president can veto it, and the Congress can override his veto by a two-thirds vote in both chambers.
Thanks to the Mechanism, Congressman and Senators can now cast a show vote to overturn a presidential debt hike, knowing that the overturn attempt will almost certainly fail.
Klein, who supports the idea, describes it as "actually kind of genius."
The Mechanism shifts power rather ingeniously. And unconstitionally. For the next three months, Congress has effectively delegated to the president the power "to borrow money on the credit of the United States," in violation of the constitutional provision lodging that power exclusively in Congress (Article I, section 8, clause 2).
Then there's the policy problem: we're already drowning in red ink. This week, the national debt surpassed $17,000,000,000,000 (seventeen trillion dollars). And Congress has made an additional $100,000,000,000,000 (hundred trillion dollars) in promises of future spending that we have no way to pay for, except with massive spending cuts, massive tax hikes, or a currency-destroying inflation.
The last thing our debt-soaked Uncle Sam needs is an unlimited tab.
And this little gift has come to us in typical Beltway fashion: without hearings, without public notice, and with nary a peep from our elected representatives.
Why did they do it?
1) To shield Members of Congress from having to vote to increase the national debt. Such votes are always politically risky. Now the president can take care of it, all by himself.
2) To enable incumbents to vote against a debt hike without actually preventing it. The "resolution of disapproval" is a sham, designed to enable politicians to reap the political benefits of deficit spending with none of the risk.
3) To avert future debt ceiling standoffs. The debt ceiling fights of July 2011 and this past week were the product of the ongoing Tea Party rebellion against excessive deficit spending and bailouts. The bipartisan Beltway elite find these fights terribly inconvenient. It is time, they've decided, to abolish such standoffs forever, and put the Tea Party in its place.
This week's bill may be part of an unfolding plan.
The McConnell Mechanism has actually been in existence for a couple of years, but in a comparatively benign form.
This week's changes make it much more malign.
Named for its author, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), the Mechanism was first enacted in mid-2011 as part of the Budget Control Act, a product of the big debt ceiling fight of that year.
That earlier version was temporary. It expired in 2012, when the national debt reached a dollar amount specified in the statute.
Last February, President Obama signed a bill that removed the dollar cap, effectively eliminating the debt limit altogether. But it did so only temporary. In a sense, Congress had merely changed the form of the limitation from a fixed number of dollars to a fixed amount of time. That move was troubling, to be sure, but in the absence of the McConnell Mechanism it wasn't necessarily fatal: Congress could check any excessive borrowing by the executive with a simple majority in each chamber.
This week, Congress took matters to a whole new level when it quietly reinstated the McConnell Mechanism.
The effect of these changes -- removing the dollar cap, reinstating the Mechanism -- is that the president may now increase the national debt on his own initiative and without limit.
This has never happened before.
Was it a result of conspiracy or accident? I'm unsure. But consider: First, they effectively removed Congress's power to control borrowing. Then they removed any upper limit on that borrowing. If they are conspiring against the public, the logical next step in the progression would be to make the arrangement permanent.
If they try to do so, we will have our answer.
Now, to be fair to the Mechanism's defenders, they will reject the contention that the president's power is unlimited. They will say it is limited only borrowing "amounts necessary for expenditures authorized by law" (31 USC 3102) and "to meet existing commitments" (H.R.2775 [P.L. 113-46], sec. 1002(b)) (emphases added). In other words, the president can only borrow to pay for bills already legally incurred by Congress.
Sounds great.
But think about it. The power to determine precisely what is "authorized by law" and what are "existing commitments" rests with ... the president.
Suppose he misinterprets what's "authorized by law" or what's an "existing commitment." Could Congress override him? Not easily. It takes two-thirds of each chamber, remember, to override a veto -- a very high bar.
Could the Supreme Court rein him in? Also unlikely. The federal courts can only step in if someone can show "standing," i.e., that he's been directly injured by the president's action -- also a very high bar, probably insuperable. Who could prove direct personal harm from the president's borrowing a trillion dollars?
Can we safely entrust our current president with unlimited borrowing power? We've seen how willing Mr. Obama is to stretch or ignore laws to secure his political ends.
For example: In early July, he administratively suspended the employer mandate in his own health care law, as if it were a mere suggestion rather than a legal requirement. When the House responded, paradoxically, by passing a bill to codify the suspension, he threatened to veto it!
ObamaCare, it seems, can only be amended by King Barack I.
No, the "authorized by law / existing commitments" limitation isn't sufficient. It can't stop an unprincipled chief executive.
The borrowing power was placed in Congress's hands for a reason. No one person can safely be trusted with that much power.
The McConnell Mechanism is dangerous, should never have been passed, and should be repealed immediately -- before King Barack can wield it.
Dean Clancy is Vice President for Public Policy at FreedomWorks.
Congress made President Obama a temporary king the other day. And the crown was placed upon his head by none other than the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell. No joke. On October 16th, Congress passed, and the following day the president signed into law, a bill (H.R.2775) to temporarily suspend the U.S. Government's statutory debt limit and also temporarily shift Congress's borrowing power to the president.
[UPDATE: 10/15, 4:00 PM -- News reports suggest House Republican leaders are taking the "deal" to the House floor for a vote this evening, but are changing some of the details. Specifically, the leaders have decided to reopen the government until December 15th instead of January 15th; drop the medical device tax delay; drop the income verification provision; and apply ObamaCare to congressional staff. It's unclear at presstime whether the bill has sufficient support to pass.]
[UPDATE: 10/15, 7:45 PM -- House Speaker Boehner pulled the bill from consideration this afternoon, after House conservatives rebelled against it. FreedomWorks had issued a Key Vote NO letter on the plan, as had other groups. President Obama and Senate Harry Reid also signalled opposition, driving House Democrats away and proving once again that the hard Left likes to bargain hard, even on the brink of alleged "default."]
[UPDATE: 10/16, 12:00 PM -- Reports this morning say Speaker Boehner will call a vote today on a legislative package negotiated overnight by Senators Reid and McConnell. The new package is stripped down to almost nothing. It will reopen the government until mid-January; extend the debt limit till early February; and symbolically tighten income fraud verification in the exchanges. Plus, the separate budget conference committee would have to report a budget plan by December 13th -- a plan very likely to bust the sequester spending caps and increase the size of government. That's it. Like yesterday's failed version, the bill would do nothing to give the American people relief from ObamaCare. Presumably the bill will pass with most Democrats voting in favor, which would enable most Republicans to vote against. We have not yet seen legislative text, but based on the reports FreedomWorks would key-vote "NO."]
Bipartisan congressional leaders are conspiring once again to stiff-arm the American people and preserve ObamaCare, even as that monstrously unfair, unaffordable, and unnecessary scheme shows signs of complete unworkability.
Late yesterday, Senators Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) reportedly struck a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and reopen the government, without any conditions and without relieving the American people from ObamaCare.
This morning, House leaders came out with a slightly different version of the same "deal."
In this post, I will try to summarize and critique each of the various elements in play.
The short version: It's a non-starter for grassroots America.
NOTE: The details below describe proposals by the two chambers' respective leaders. They do not necessarily reflect the views of individual members of either chamber. Also, some details are unclear at presstime and are subject to revision as new information comes out.
Continuing Resolution
Senate: Immediately reopen the government and fund it at fiscal year 2013 levels until January 15, 2014.
House: Same.
FreedomWorks: There is no need to reopen the government all at once. Instead, the House should continue to hold out for a halt to ObamaCare. To reduce the political pressure on itself, the House can continue its smart policy of passing targeted "mini-CRs" for specific, high-profile agencies or programs (such as NIH cancer clinical trials).
Debt Ceiling
Senate: Extend the debt limit until February 7.
House: Same. But also: Remove the President's flexibility to evade the debt limit through so-called "extraordinary measures" (e.g., borrowing temporarily from certain federal trust funds).
FreedomWorks: As for raising the debt limit, ordinarily, we'd say don't do it at all, or least not without significant offsetting spending cuts. But the current government shutdown is admittedly not an ordinary situation. The standoff began with a grassroots effort to halt ObamaCare, and that fight should remain front and center. Therefore, while parts of the government remain shuttered, the debt limit should be lifted temporarily, without strings or conditions, in order to take the "default" canard off the table and restore the House's leverage over spending and ObamaCare. P.S. Eliminating "extraordinary measures" is a good idea on its own merits, because it gives Congress greater power over borrowing, as the Founders intended; but the reform is not urgently needed in the current situation.
Health Insurer Reinsurance Fee
Senate: Eliminate the health insurer reinsurance fee.
House: No provision.
FreedomWorks: A sop to the labor unions. Abolishing this tax-like fee is fine, but only if we also abolish the $10 billion subsidy to the health insurance industry that it funds.
Income Fraud Prevention for Exchange Subsidies
Senate: No provision.
House: Require that the HHS Secretary certify that the health care exchanges are secure from income fraud.
FreedomWorks: Fig leaf. Merely restates current law. HHS can't even manage to process our passwords; how are we supposed to trust them to prevent people from lying about their income to qualify for taxpayer subsidies -- especially after President Obama publicly announced that he would not bother to verify applicants' income claims?
Medical Device Tax
Senate: No provision. (Democrats, who control the Senate, are said to strongly oppose repeal or delay of this 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices.)
House: Two-year delay of the medical device tax.
FreedomWorks: The House provision is a sop to the medical device industry, which notably employs a former senior advisor to Speaker Boehner. We say: Not just no, but hell no! No more relief for corporations or unions until the American people get relief from this terrible law! Every corporate interest and powerful labor union in America has managed to finagle an exemption from ObamaCare -- even Congress! Where's our exemption?
Apply ObamaCare to Political Leaders
Senate: No provision.
House: Apply ObamaCare to Members of Congress, the President, the Vice President, and members of the President's Cabinet (but note: not to their staffs).
FreedomWorks: This provision, while fully justified (and we would also apply it to congressional staff), is no substitute for relieving the American people from ObamaCare
Bicameral Budget Committee
Senate: Agree to negotiate with the other chamber on possible future spending and tax increases in the context of a House-Senate budget conference committee, which has been stalled since May. Also discuss cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
House: Same.
FreedomWorks: Negotiating a budget is a good thing. But increasing spending and taxes is not. Additionally, linking budget talks to the CR/ObamaCare fight is a strategic mistake. (Sadly, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who claims to be an opponent of ObamaCare, was the leading force behind forging this misguided linkage, which undermines the efforts of grassroots America to halt the government takeover of their health care.)
Senate: Fully fund ObamaCare. Don't delay any part of ObamaCare. Provide no relief to the American people from ObamaCare.
House: Same.
FreedomWorks: Has the disconnect between America and Washington ever been wider?
What Next?
The ball is in the House's court. Here's what it should do:
Conclusion: At Least Delay the Mandate
At a minimum, the House should hold out for a delay of the unfair and deeply unpopular individual mandate. This mandate, effectively a punitive tax on the poor, represents one of of the most massive giveaways to corporate America in U.S. history, forcibly creating a gigantic captive market for the health insurance industry. It is also the law's linchpin.
Postponing it for a year would put a question mark over the entire scheme's future and effectively make ObamaCare the focus of the 2014 elections.
By the way, why do we even need a mandate? If ObamaCare is so wonderful, why can't it be voluntary? What's wrong with letting people opt out?
This morning, I walked through the rain to work. After arriving at the office, I proceeded to make myself a cup of coffee and log on to my computer. The first thing I did was visit the Drudge Report to find out the big headline news today. What I found nearly made me throw my coffee at the computer screen.
The Daily Caller reported earlier today that CGI Federal, the company contracted to create the Obamacare exchange website, was paid $634,320,919 to build the site. A drop in the bucket compared to the total federal debt and deficit, sure, but is this the best our federal government can do for a law they've so heavily promoted? $634 million and the federal government can't even get a website to function properly? Outrageous.
Clearly we need to re-evaluate the total cost of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, since the grand opening of Obamacare is inspiring so much confidence in how the federal government manages our tax dollars.
Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has started the conversation in a commentary he wrote yesterday. He made some disturbing observations, revealing how many of the revenue mechanisms in the Affordable Care Act have "started to unravel, while pressure mounted to expand its spending programs." Remember now, the Obama administration repeatedly promised that the ACA would cut the deficit.
Blahous points out that "One of the first provisions to bite the dust was the CLASS long-term care program, suspended in 2011 due to its financial unsoundness." It was supposed to be a source of $70 billion of revenue in the first ten years to finance Obamacare. Also, the employer mandate, which the Obama Administration delayed with questionable legality, was allegedly scheduled to deliver $140 billion in revenues over the next decade. The delay will no doubt shift that projection downward. Furthermore, Blahous indicates that "The ACA's finances further depend on a new tax on medical device manufacturers, estimated to raise $29 billion from 2013-'22." Members of both political parties have indicated that they view a repeal of the tax as a compromise that can end the government shutdown, removing that $29 billion revenue source.
Those are just three examples Blahous has highlighted and they show that Obamacare is already scheduled to lose $196 billion in revenue. In a previous research paper, Blahous noted that "between now and 2021, the ACA is expected to add as much as $530 billion to federal deficits while increasing spending by more than $1.15 trillion." I fail to see how gutting revenue mechanisms from a law that already increases deficit spending will cut deficit spending.
So, let's put Obamacare, which constitutes a massive increase in federal spending, in the context of the government shutdown and debt ceiling debate. The shutdown occurred after Democrats refused to accept a Republican compromise to delay the implementation of Obamacare for one year. The CBO estimates that such a delay would save $36 billion over the next ten years. Delaying the law would also give Congress more time to repeal or revise the law to make it fiscally sustainable, but the Democrats have unconditionally refused to stall the implementation of Obamacare, even in spite of the demonstrated problems with Obamacare's launch.
Now the raging debate in Congress has shifted over the last few days to raising the debt ceiling and whether or not the federal government will default on its debt obligations to creditors. The debt ceiling is currently $16.699 trillion. As I write this sentence, the U.S. A.'s total debt is $16.970 trillion. The United States is predicted to hit the debt limit on Thursday, next week, the 17th of October. Dean Clancy, vice-president of public policy at FreedomWorks, has already explained why the government will not default. He's even made a good case for eliminating the debt ceiling entirely.
But, given that we're having this debate, and that the consequences of defaulting on our creditors are reported to be so drastic, is it really a good idea to add another $1.15 trillion (at bare minimum) to federal spending? And can we trust the federal government to manage all that money when they can't even run a website?
UPDATE: Only 51,000 were able to sign up for the Obamacare exchanges after an entire week. Clearly our tax dollars were well spent on that website.
This morning, I walked through the rain to work. After arriving at the office, I proceeded to make myself a cup of coffee and log on to my computer. The first thing I did was visit the Drudge Report to find out the big headline news today. What I found nearly made me throw my coffee at the computer screen.
Default won't happen.
This chart shows why the U.S. Government will not default on its debt, should it hit the statutory debt limit set by Congress (a limit that the Treasury Deparment suggests may be reached later this month).
(Click on image to see larger version.)
Look at the red spending bar.
Zero in on the small section at the far left, marked "Interest on Debt."
Now compare it to the entire green tax revenue bar above it, marked "Income."
The two bars aren't even close in length.
Uncle Sam takes in vastly more money each day than he needs to pay principal and interest on U.S. government bonds.
That's what a "default" is -- failing to pay your creditors on time.
Were we to arrive at "X day," meaning the day when the statutory debt limit is reached and the president can no longer legally borrow on the credit of the United States, the president would not default.
Rather, he would be forced to decide whom to pay first, and whom to pay later when sufficient funds become available. This is called prioritization.
No statute bars the president from prioritizing holders of U.S. government bonds over others to whom the government also has financial obligations. Some lawyers contend that the U.S. Constitution actually requires him to do so (14th Amendment, section 4).
Regardless of the law, every president, including the current one, when the question comes up, swears publicly never to do anything that would diminish the "full faith and credit" of the United States.
This term, "full faith and credit," is important, and, at the risk of boring the reader, I want to explain why.
"Full faith and credit" is a term of art, with a specific meaning. "Faith" is a word from the world of contracts. It means "keeping your promises." "Credit" is a word from the world of finance. It means "having a reputation for always repaying your debts to creditors, on time, in full, without fail." Creditors are people who have lent you money. Even the seemingly minor words "full" and "and" in the phrase are important: they narrow its meaning.
The precise meaning of the phrase is: "always paying back those who have lent you money, on time, in full, according to the terms of the contract, without fail."
It does not mean: "always paying your bills on time -- any kind of bill."
The key element in the definition is "those who have lent you money."
Another clue that the term has the more narrow meaning I've given is that we don't often hear it used outside the context of government debt. We don't hear people talk about the full faith and credit of BankAmerica, or of Joe Citizen. We do hear about the full faith and credit of the United States.
That may be because governments are held to a higher standard than other kinds of debtors, and rightly so. They have the power to tax -- to take their citizens' or subjects' money by force. Governments don't have a good excuse for missing payments to their creditors.
When someone purchases a U.S. government bond, he is lending money to the U.S. government. The "full faith and credit of the United States" means Uncle Sam's reputation for always paying promised principal and interest to holders of bonds that it has sold to them. It doesn't refer to Uncle Sam's reputation for paying others to whom he may owe money.
While other kinds of government payments -- paychecks, benefit checks, reimbursements, financial grants of various kinds -- may be subject to the terms of a contract and thus matters of "faith," they are never matters of "credit."
Okay, now that we've beat that dead horse into the ground, let's finish off the "default" canard by challenging ourselves with an example. Let's take the politically hardest example we can think of: Social Security.
What if Social Security checks don't go out on time, as scheduled? Is that a default No.
Social Security is paid out monthly, usually transferred electronically to retirees' bank accounts. Most Social Security payments are made on the second, third, and fourth Wednesday of each month. Let's say we hit the debt ceiling on the second Monday of the month, and, come Wednesday, the president runs short of cash and finds he can't make the regular Social Security payout. What does he do? He has no choice. He can't pay it. So he has to postpone it for, let's say, one week, due to lack of sufficient funds.
(This is very unlikely to happen, by the way. Look at the chart again.)
In this, the "worst of all possible scenarios," retirees will be inconvenienced, to be sure -- some, severely. Doubtless many will cry, "Breach of faith!" But none could truthfully cry, "Default!"
Remember, "default" is when you fail to pay your creditors. Uncle Sam will keep doing so, no matter what.
Markets don't much care about the government's "debts" to retirees. They do care a lot about its debts to creditors.
Those who warn of a "default" "rattling" markets and possibly causing "economic Armageddon" are either confused or consciously trying to confuse.
Yeah, you may say. But what about market volatility? Just talking about "going past X day" will "rattle" markets, and perhaps even trigger a recession!
Maybe, maybe not.
Uncle Sam has a perfect record when it comes to debt service. He has never yet missed an interest payment on U.S. government bonds.
(Okay, he did once, unavoidably, in 1979, due to a computer error, but the amount was so small and the delay so brief that it had no discernible effect.)
But Uncle Sam has missed other kinds of payments. Many times. And the world did not end.
Has the IRS ever been late in sending you your tax refund?
Has Medicare ever been late in reimbursing a doctor or hospital?
Of course!
No serious observer regards those kinds of delays as "defaults."
Delaying tens of billions in Social Security benefits would not rattle financial markets one-tenth as much as would a failure to make a tiny, legally obligatory interest payment on a series of U.S. Government bonds.
Why is every president so determined to avert a true default? Because no president wants to be the first to ruin our nation's perfect repayment record. It would reflect very negatively on his performance as president. It would be a black mark on his legacy.
In the event the president does run out of borrowing headroom, he will prioritize.
Default won't happen.
+ + +
[Update: October 9: Moody's, one of the main independent credit rating agencies that determine whether a government is in "default," confirms that default won't happen.]
+ + +
[Image by Matt Battaglia, FreedomWorks Creative Manager, October 7, 2013.]
Debt Ceiling: Resources for Activists and Journalists
Default won't happen. This chart shows why the U.S. Government will not default on its debt, should it hit the statutory debt limit set by Congress (a limit that the Treasury Deparment suggests may be reached later this month).
It's as if current events are working together to reform education, or, at the very least, to make it evident to all Americans why reform needs to happen. Between the current government shutdown and the looming debt ceiling, it's becoming more evident every day that the safest place for education is as far away from the federal government as possible.
One week ago, Congress failed to reach agreement on the latest funding crisis, and the federal government shut down. When numbers were released on furloughs, we had concrete evidence on just how wasteful the Department of Education is. Education is mostly in the bailiwick of state and local governments (as it should be), leaving 94% of the Department of Education officials declared "non-essential." In other words, almost every single federal Department of Education employee is unnecessary to educate our children.
10 days from now, on October 17th, America will be hitting the fiscal wall. On that day, the United States government will once again need to authorize more borrowing in order to pay our bills. Heaven forbid we should just cut back instead. There are those who will tell you that we can't cut back, and that all of this spending is for the children. Isn't it always? The story goes that, if the government isn't able to borrow, education spending (among other things) would have to stop. Do they mean that the federal government would be pushed out of education? That sounds like a fantastic idea!
What we are learning from the current state of American affairs is that the federal government is unable to administrate education effectively. It has been revealed to be all but useless. It's time to put education completely in the hands of local educators, legislators and parents and stop giving money and power to DC bureaucrats.
It's as if current events are working together to reform education, or, at the very least, to make it evident to all Americans why reform needs to happen. Between the current government shutdown and the looming debt ceiling, it's becoming more evident every day that the safest place for education is as far away from the federal government as possible.
Warning: This title may be ironic.
Get rid of the debt ceiling.
Yes, get rid of it.
Although Ezra Klein and I are generally on opposite ends of the political spectrum, we agree, as he opines in the Washington Post today, that we should "get rid of the debt ceiling forever."
Klein notes that eliminating the statutory limit on the president's borrrowing authority would obviate the recurring Beltway debt-limit staredowns, which, as we saw two years ago, and may see again soon, can rattle Wall Street and play mumbledy-peg with Uncle Sam's credit rating.
No one enjoys such fights. They're annoying. They're kind of scary. And more importantly, they don't product helpful policy changes: they don't lead to balanced budgets or smaller government.
The Budget Control Act that came out of the Great Debt Ceiling Debate of 2011 didn't produce a workable plan for ending Uncle Sam's debt addiction. Instead, it produced a ludicrously inconsequential (and unconstitutional) "super committee," followed by a universally despised set of across-the-board spending trims known as the "sequester."
After all that sturm und drang, all we got was this lousy tee shirt, and a humiliating downgrade of the US government's credit rating.
And the government just kept growing. Sigh.
Klein argues that the debt ceiling is also economically dangerous:
The debt ceiling is an anachronism ... But it's not an adorable anachronism, like grandfather clocks. It's a dangerous one, like bloodletting, lobotomies and burning people you suspect to be a witch. If we crash through the debt ceiling, a global financial crisis could — and likely will — result.
That's an exaggeration, because we currently have enough tax receipts coming in to cover all our debt obligations. Hitting the debt ceiling won't produce a bond default. But Klein's point still stands: the debt ceiling is certainly perceived as a dangerous tripwire, and approaching it does make markets nervous.
An actual bond default would have noticeable effects on federal financial operations. At a minimum, it would drive up the interest rates the U.S. has to pay global investors, which, in the absence of spending cuts or tax hikes, will drive up deficits.
Some fiscal conservatives may argue that, flawed as it may be, the debt limit is the only lever we have to force needed spending reductions. That's basically true. But it's by no means the best tool, nor even a necessary one. In fact, eliminating it would paradoxically force Congress to balance the budget overnight, while creating incentives to shrink government over time.
Indeed, I would argue that the existence of the debt ceiling actually facilitates ever-bigger government.
That may explain why Klein doesn't actually want to "get rid of it," as I am suggesting. Rather, he wants to shift it permanently from Congress to the president.
In other words, Klein and I are actually taking opposite positions, despite both using the same words -- "get rid of the debt ceiling" -- to describe our proposal.
He wants to give the power to the president. I want to give it back to Congress.
The current debt ceiling law was first adopted in 1917 as a kind of halfway house arrangement, wherein Congress partially delegates its borrowing power to the president. This arrangement creates a persistent tension between the branches. Whose power is it, really? What happens when they disagree? (Economic Armageddon, apparently.)
Klein wants to resolve that tension by shifting the power permanently to the president:
The basic idea [is] to permit the president to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling unless Congress affirmatively voted to stop him. And even if Congress did vote to stop him, the president could veto, and then Congress would need to overturn his veto.
This idea was first proposed two years ago by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. More recently, it has been embraced by President Obama.
Two problems.
One, it's unconstitutional.
Two, it's dangerous -- more dangerous, even, than bloodletting, lobotomies, or witch burnings.
Article I, section 8, clause 2, of the Constitution, says: "Congress shall have power … To borrow money on the credit of the United States." There's no wiggle room there. Only Congress has the authority. It can't delegate it to the president or anyone else.
But wait. Doesn't the president borrow money on the credit of the United States? The treasury secretary sells government bonds. Isn't that borrowing? Sure. But as I said, it's a halfway house: he can only do it to the extent, and under the terms, set by Congress. As an executive-branch financial officer, he is merely executing a power that always resides ultimately with Congress.
He's like the man who's driving a car, but his wife is telling him when to turn, when to speed up, when to slow down, etc. Who is really driving the car?
Klein may argue that his plan is constitutional because, even under it, Congress retains the ultimate say. But is that really true?
Realistically, under McConnell-Obama-Klein, the legislative branch could only stop presidential borrowing by the extraordinary step of a veto override. A supermajority would now be required in each house of Congress to impose limits on borrowing, whereas today it only takes a simple majority.
That would enable the president, through the savvy direction of earmarks and grants to certain states and congressional districts, to buy off a sufficient number of votes to thwart an override (incidentally using the very money he borrowed in the first place).
It's a formula for kingly corruption.
No, if you want to put an end to these annoying debt-ceiling fights in a constitutional -- and non-monarchical -- way, you have to simply repeal the debt ceiling statute.
What would happen?
Beautiful things.
Whenever Congress needed to spend, it would have to authorize an equal amount of new borrowing authority as part of the bill that authorized the spending -- assuming it didn't use tax hikes or spending cuts to offset the new spending.
That discipline would tend to keep the growth of government in check.
Borrow-as-we-go -- as well as tax-as-we-go and cut-as-we-go -- was basically what Congress did prior to 1917, when the first debt ceiling law was enacted.
Prior to the debt ceiling, politicians hewed to fiscal common sense. They had to. As a result, you never saw these big, pent-up budgetary pressures leading to nerve-wracking games of fiscal chicken.
Gladstone's handy definition of "economy in government" consists of five simple rules: "Limit spending, tax lightly, borrow the minimum, maintain a surplus, pay off debt." Getting rid of the debt ceiling would drive us back to Gladstonian common sense. Here's why:
1) In the absence of standing borrowing authority, whenever the government is running deficits, the Treasury would be in danger of a bond default. No one wants that.
2) To avert a bond default, Congress would constantly be looking for ways to balance the budget, or better yet to run surpluses -- lest Members find themselves too often casting politically dangerous votes to raise taxes or debt. The result is likely to be routine surpluses, rather than chronic deficits.
3) In a world of routine surpluses, government will shrink, because every move to expand government -- be it on the taxing or spending side of the ledger -- will have to be paid for more or less in real time. Politicians will find it difficult to shift the costs of current consumption onto future generations.
Yes, they will be tempted to spend surpluses on bigger government. But they will discover that doing so eliminates those same surpluses, necessitating tax hikes or borrowing to keep the binge going.
Because politicians can't agree on whether to spend a surplus on new spending or tax cuts, they tend to fall back on the idea of using it for debt reduction. (That's what happened during the surplus of the late 1990s.) When the debt is extinguished, their next preference is usually tax cuts, which are generally always more popular than new spending programs, no matter how wonderful the spending programs may sound.
Once debt, taxes, and spending have been cut to the bone, a culture of general restraint will set in, keeping spending, borrowing, and taxation low (in peacetime, at least), and it will tend to do so in perpetuity.
Fiscal nirvana!
The historical evidence confirms this.
Before 1917, budgets were routinely balanced, and federal debt, spending, and taxes were low. (Also, zero inflation, but that's another story.)
Since 1939, when the debt ceiling took its current form, federal peacetime outlays have averaged more than 20 percent of GDP, but in the nineteenth century they averaged just three percent.
That's right. Three percent!
I will make a bold claim.
By getting rid of the debt ceiling, we can force the Beltway, not just to balance the budget overnight, but eventually to shrink spending to nineteenth-century levels.
Is Ezra Klein on board with that?
I didn't think so.
It turns out what he actually wants is for the ceiling to go up almost to infinity, while I want it to go down almost to zero.
He wants to get rid of the ceiling.
I want to get rid of the debt.
And yet we use exactly the same phrase:
"Get rid of the debt ceiling."
+ + +
On February 12, 2014, Congress passed a "clean" debt hike bill, with nearly all Democrats voting yes, along with a small number of Republicans (including the GOP leaders in both House and Senate). The bill increases our $17.3 trillion national debt by another half-trillion dollars or so, with no spending reforms. Of all the bad policy choices made in Washington since the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006, this may be the single most depressing. I am now reluctantly of the opinion that an endless series of "clean" debt hikes is now inevitable -- and meaningful fiscal restraint will remain impossible -- so long as the political class continues to accept the default canard and Congress continues to cede the borrowing power to the president.
+ + +
[UPDATE: 02/12/2014 -- Today Congress cleared for presidential approval a bill extending the suspension of the debt limit until March 15, 2015. The unconstitutional McConnell Mechanism remains in place, and thus for the next 13 months the president has control of the borrowing power, with no effective limits on his use of that power. We have a king. Which raises the question: Why only 13 months? Why not 13 years, or 13 decades?]
[UPDATE: 10/17/13 -- Yesterday Congress passed, and today the president signed into law, a bill (H.R.2775) that temporarily suspends the U.S. Government's statutory debt limit and also temporarily shifts Congress's borrowing power to the president. That's right, for the next three months, there will effectively be no way to limit the growth of the U.S. national debt. The "McConnell Mechanism," as Ezra Klein has dubbed it, is unconstitutional and an alarming step toward monarchy. The good news is that it is temporary. It will expire on February 7, 2014. It must not be renewed.]
Debt Ceiling: Resources for Activists and Journalists
FreedomWorks: Obama's Debt Claims Debunked
Chart: Why Default Won't Happen
[10/23/13] Dean Clancy: Repeal the Unconstitutional "McConnell Mechanism"
[10/17/13] Ezra Klein: No, we didn't get rid of the debt ceiling forever
[09/2613]: Dean Clancy: Get Rid of the Debt Ceiling [ironic title; opposite view from Klein's]
[09/26/13]: Ezra Klein: Don't just raise the debt ceiling, get rid of it forever
Warning: This title may be ironic. Get rid of the debt ceiling. Yes, get rid of it.
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text:
Found November 30, 2012 on
Fox Sports South:
Tommy Hanson,
Jair Jurrjens,
Jordan Walden,
Peter Moylan,
Kris Medlen,
Tim Hudson,
Mike Minor,
Paul Maholm,
Brandon Beachy,
Randall Delgado,
Julio Teheran,
BJ Upton
TEAMS: Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels
TEAMS: Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Angels
Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens once looked to be the future of the Braves rotation. Now if they build on their early promise, theyll be doing it in different uniforms.
The Braves traded Hanson to the Angels for reliever Jordan Walden as part of a busy day for Atlantas rotation. The club also has also announced it will not tender a contract to Jurrjens (or reliever Peter Moylan).
In exchange for Hanson, the Braves strengthen an already formidable bullpen by adding Walden, who saved 32 games as a rookie closer in 2011.
We want to thank Tommy for his contributions to our organization. Braves general manager Frank Wren said. We were looking to add another power arm to our bullpen and Jordan brings a power arm with well-above-average stuff.
The Braves were expected to move a starter given their overload at the position, but it seemed unlikely both Hanson and Jurrjens would find themselves the odd men out.
Hanson, the Braves former No. 1 prospect, was 13-10 with a 4.48 ERA in 31 starts last season, continuing what has been a drop off.
In his rookie season in 2009, he started 9-2 and finished third in the NL Rookie of the Year voting. He would go on to throw 460 innings with a 3.28 ERA over his first three years.
While he had a career-high 13 wins last season and 161 strikeouts, his ERA rose to 4.48 during 12. He suffered from back and shoulder injuries and walked a career-high 71 batters in 174 13 innings.
At 26 with plenty of upside to draw interest, and with a deal that has him under club control until 2015, moving Hanson made sense.
Jurrjens, 26, burst onto the scene with an impressive rookie year in 2008 in which he led the Braves with 13 wins and 139 strikeouts. He went on to win 14 games in 09 with a 2.60 ERA and 152 Ks, but he suffered a shoulder injury the following spring and his 10 was cut short with a right knee injury which also caused him to miss the first two weeks of 2011.
He bounced back to make his only All-Star Game appearance the following season in which he went 13-6 with a 2.96 ERA. Jurrjens velocity was down and so were his strikeouts, falling to 5.3 per nine innings, his lowest since joining the Braves.
Jurrjens was sent down to Triple-A Gwinnett last season, and while he returned to Atlanta in June, he allowed 14 earned runs over his last two starts before being placed on the disabled list Aug. 1 with a strained groin. He finished last season with a 6.89 ERA and 19 strikeouts to 18 walks.
By not tendering a deal to Jurrjens his is now free to negotiation with any team.
Either one making the starting rotation next season was no given.
With a rotation that includes Kris Medlen, Tim Hudson, Mike Minor and Paul Maholm -- along with Brandon Beachy who is expected to return in midseason from Tommy John surgery -- Hanson was expected to have to compete with Randall Delgado and Julio Teheran as the fifth starter. Jurrjens would subsequently have been squeezed out.
Hanson's deal continues a busy week for the Braves, who made the biggest move in free agency by signing center fielder B.J. Upton to a five-year, 75.25 million deal, making him the highest paid player in franchise history.
Original Story:
Braves May Have Traded Tommy Hanson to Avoid Injury Concerns
Why the Hanson-Walden trade makes sense for Braves
Reports: Angels acquire Tommy Hanson
Braves Find Angel Investor For Tommy Boy's Salary
Angels acquire Tommy Hanson from Braves for Jordan Walden
Braves trade Hanson to Angels for Walden
Report: Angels Acquire Pitcher Tommy Hanson From Braves for Jordan Walden
Braves Trade Tommy Hanson To Angels For Jordan Walden
BYE TOMMY, hello new guys Walden and Carpenter!
JeDi strikes again, swaps Walden for Hanson
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text:
Code Name: Cowboy Man on a Mission Once Forbidden Out of Exile The Perfect Family Rodeo Dad Rules of Engagement Safety in Numbers Strangers When We Married
Man on a Mission
Once Forbidden
Out of Exile
The Perfect Family
Rodeo Dad
Rules of Engagement
Safety in Numbers
Strangers When We Married
His mother lives in the same apartment complex so she can take care of Maddie while Hank is out of town on work. Emotionally, he keeps distancing himself from Maddie.
Hank makes friends with Lainie Thompson, a neighbor in the complex, and Maddie spends a lot of time with Lainie and begins to see her in the role of stepmother. Then Lainie is brutally murdered and her sister Melody comes to town to push the investigation and to wind up her sister's affairs.
Melody has spent a life time "mothering" Lainie and getting her out of scrape after scrape. Their relationship is a thinly disguised class in co-dependency. Hank and Melody meet; realizing they have the same goal in finding Lainie's killer, they form a quasi-partnership. To Hank it is less a partnership than an effort to protect Melody, as early on it is obvious that someone is threatened by her presence. After warnings for her to leave town are ignored, the pace gently escalates throughout their investigation.
The mutual attraction proceeds in a lazy manner as well. In this novel, the romance and suspense are cultivated in an almost tension free environment. One never feels that Melody is truly at risk, and one never feels that Hank has the depth of emotion or character to become a full partner in any burgeoning relationship.
Character development is shallow, with a focus on only what will move this simple story line ahead. Perky little Maddie perhaps adds the most interest to the story, but she is an infrequent visitor to the storyline. The pace is slow, and the unraveling of the killer's identity and motives are barely credible, as very little time throughout the story had been devoted to the maturing of that plot line.
Carla Cassidy is a prolific writer and newcomers to her work are urged to select an earlier novel for their first reading experience, thereby opening the door to becoming a Cassidy fan.
--Thea Davis


text:
Michael Jordan is on his way to creating a basketball team of his own ... TMZ Sports has learned he's having IDENTICAL twin girls.
Michael's wife, Yvette Prieto, is pregnant, though we don't know how far along. They were married in April.
Michael already has 3 kids -- 2 boys and a girl. The kids are all in their 20s.
The people we've been speaking with in Jordan's world are being super secretive/scared stiff. But we're told so far ... the pregnancy is progressing just fine.
Unless there are one of several problems with the pregnancy, there is no way to tell if twins are identical until after birth with a DNA test or wait for them to grow a bit. I'm a mother of identical twins. Without TTTS (a condition that almost killed them, exclusive to identical sets), there was no way for me to know if they were or not. There are a few issues such as the aforementioned TTTS, lack of membrane between fetuses or something like shared umbilical cords. So if they know, she's got a pregnancy problem - may not be severe but something isn't right.
Yea,... young white trophy wife and gold digger thoughts. Sounds like a movie that will probably play out
I'm a twin. I'd like to know how he knows the twins are IDENTICAl while they are still in the womb.
"Every time you see me I look like I hit the lotto twice"
Mrs. Gold Digger Jordan,
One thing I know as a Black Man, is that Latino girls don't date us unless they're 300 pounds, anything under that requires us to be filthy rich.
explains why his new kicks are so pricey! Twins will do that to the now-not-so-famous-anymore.


text:
View of the Penticton Marina
Sightseeing (Picture BC photo)
For information on sightseeing tours in this location and other nearby locations, check out the map and product listings from business or service providers below.
Local Visitor Centres may also be able to offer helpful information about sightseeing tours available in this area.
5 Sightseeing Tours in Penticton
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Have you been on the Bead Trail yet?
Get started on the Bead Trail with a map and a bracelet, available at South Okanagan Visitor Centres and all participating businesses. Discover South Okanagan wineries, restaurants, boutiques, studios and other fantastic places! Where there's a bead, there's a story. Each business has it's own signature bead for you to find and collect. It's a fun and affordable way to get yourself a beautiful, unique piece of jewelry.
Follow the Bead Trail and collect both a bead and the story at each location as you go.
Summer fun on Penticton's unique paddlewheeler!
We offer a variety of cruises such as scenic, dinner buffet, BBQ, cocktail and parties with live music. We also host events such as wine-tasting.
Looking for a special location for your private or corporate function? Charter the whole boat! 48 passenger capacity on 2 decks. Roofed open air deck plus enclosed deck with huge panorama windows.
We also have the option to Bring-Your-Own food or let us organize the catering - casual to high end. Fully licensed premises.
Come experience a cruise along the beautiful south end of Okanagan Lake and create lasting memories for your family and friends. See you next summer!
Winner of the 2012 Best New Business of the Year Award from Penticton & Wine Country Chamber of Commerce & 2012 Best of the Okanagan Readers' Choice Award Okanagan Life Magazine, we are a premier tour company in the South Okanagan & the only wine industry certified tour operator in Penticton.
We educate & entertain you. We were born here, play here and live here. Five zones to choose from - Naramata Bench, OK Falls, Summerland, Oliver-Osoyoos & the Similkameen. From our "Simply Sipping Discovery Experience" where you can search out your new favourite winery & wine, to our "Grapes to Glass Discovery Experience" for a more in-depth exploration of the vineyard and/or wine-making process, we offer a portfolio of options for you.
We're driving you to drink...legally...and loving it.
In 1989, the 'Farm-gate Winery' license was created. This allowed small growers to start their own operations. Lang Vineyards was the first to receive such a license & opened in Spring 1990. The small but superbly equiped winery has since grown well beyond the farm winery concept.
The winery has enjoyed success with Riesling, ice-wines & a dessert wine called "The Original Canadian Maple Wine". The only hybrid varietal remaining is the Marechal Foch, which is also one of Lang's most popular wines.
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As a member of the BC Wine Institute, we are held to a high standard. The BC VQA is your assurance that the wine you're purchasing is 100% from BC & has met rigorous quality regulations.


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Originally Published: March 26, 2013 9:27 PM Modified: March 27, 2013 7:11 AM
Lengthy labor contracts may cost counties fundingBy Associated Press
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LANSING — Legislation passed by a Republican-controlled House panel could put some state funding at risk for local governments that sign long labor contracts before Michigan's right-to-work law takes effect. The bill was approved by the House General Government Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday. It would tie some incentive funding for counties, cities, villages and townships to requirements that union contracts renewed or extended before Thursday show savings of more than 10 percent. Exact funding consequences for each municipality weren't immediately clear. Washtenaw County last week approved 10-year contracts with its unions. Similar restrictions in a recent higher education budget proposal would cut 15 percent of aid for universities that enter into lengthy contracts without savings. Republicans criticize the contracts as circumventing the right-to-work law. Democrats say the contract negotiations have been fair. Related Content:
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BTSC interviews Steelers beat reporter Dale Lolley with questions relating to the 2009 NFL Draft.
With some time to reflect, each of the NFC West bloggers assessed their team's performance in the draft.
The Dallas Cowboys received some positive reviews on their draft. New special teams coach Joe DeCamillis is featured and some draft picks may be gems.
A comprehensive review of the major news media grades of the 49ers 2009 NFL Draft.
Experts who grade the professionals on their draft performance deserve to be graded themselves. Besides, it's fun, so let's do it.
Not seeing any value in the first round, Bill Belichick traded down multiple times, slipping out of the first round entirely. Receiving two additional 2010 second-round picks, from the Titans and Jaguars, is a big plus and could bring two future starters. Belichick was very savvy moving up and down the draft board, which he does as well as anyone in the NFL, executing a league-high seven trades over the weekend. He had also picked up a second-round pick for QB Matt Cassel. S Patrick Chung, DT Ron Brace and CB Darius Butler all have starter potential, as does Hawaii LS Jake Ingram. OT Sebastian Vollmer and WR Brandon Tate were reaches with pressing injury concerns, but both fit the Patriots' offense very well, and LB Tyrone McKenzie could become a solid pro. With one of the NFL's deepest rosters, Round Five on likely will not provide any value. The acquisition of future picks and the ability to wheel and deal make this draft a win for Belichick, player personnel director Nick Caserio and senior football advisor Floyd Reese. The Patriots also added WR Greg Lewis before the draft and dealt starting CB Ellis Hobbs to the Eagles.
Pro Football Weekly hearts the Patriots' draftAn interview with Missour Tigers blog Rock M Nation in hopes of getting to know a bit more about Evander Ziggy Hood, the Pittsburgh Steelers 1st Round Draft pick in the 2009 NFL Draft.
A rundown of Niners Nation's monster coverage from Saturday through Monday.
Another assessment of the Pittsburgh Steelers 2009 NFL Draft picks.
Taking a look at each draft pick made by Bill Parcells and Jeff Ireland this past weekend.
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I woke up in a surgical room at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, looked down and noticed I was topless and there were men around me.
My scars from my bilateral mastectomy were in full view. But I didnt panic.
There goes my career as a stripper, I joked.
I later updated my Facebook status: Done with surgery! Im high as a kite singing Strawberry Fields.
It has been two weeks since Dr. Frederick L. Moffat surgically removed a device that had been implanted about a year ago beneath my skin. It was placed below the collar bone, near my right shoulder to facilitate the delivery of the drugs during chemotherapy.
The device is known as a portacath or implanted venous access port. It was slightly wider than a quarter and about as thick as my iPhone 4S. It also had a plastic tube attached that a doctor at Mercy Hospital inserted into my jugular vein, which made it uncomfortable to wear necklaces.
The new accessory was one of the first steps in my breast cancer treatment. Despite the discomfort, I grew attached to it. Without it, I would have had to deal with big needles that can produce a painful burning sensation and leave one bruised for a few days.
Chemotherapy ended on Oct. 25, 2011. I didnt have the port removed out of fear.
What if the cancer comes back and I need a port? I asked Moffat before my recent surgery.
He said I could get another one. He explained there were risks to leaving the port in my body for too long.
A blood clot can form in the catheter, Moffat said.
I agreed to removal after I learned that my uncle in Colombia had recently suffered a thrombotic stroke, meaning a blood clot had obstructed the flow of blood to a part of the brain. What shocked me the most was his loss of speech. Stroke is the single largest cause of disability in adults in the developed world. The choice was clear.
Now that I have let go of the port, I know I have to move beyond my fears. It wont be easy. For instance, now there is a small lump under my arm. I will see Dr. Robert Derhagopian, a surgical oncologist at Baptist Hospital, today so he can examine it for a second time.
Another surgery means another scar. Already the scar from the port surgery is about an inch long. It looks like I was stabbed. Décolleté dresses and tube tops would never look the same. I put on a sweater and went on with my day. I will get used to it.
My perspective of the scar changed after I saw a video this weekend that a friend sent me. She is being treated for breast cancer. It is titled Stuff Breast Cancer Survivors Say.
In the video, a sign appears: Chemotherapy is generally administered through a port surgically inserted under the clavicle.
Then a woman shows off her port scar, and a sign reads: A scar basically means I survived.
One after another, several other women showed their scars. It got me teary-eyed. Sometimes I am my worst critic. Earlier that day, I had looked at myself in the mirror without a sign of compassion.
On them, the scar told a story about their struggle to survive. On them, the scar was beautiful.


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Fully functional and a whole lot stylish, this loafer makes adorable feet even more precious. Slip tiny toes into a great shoe for a showstopping look.
We offer such amazing discounts because we don't house any inventory after our sales end and therefore cannot process returns. However, we want you to be delighted and would never expect you to pay for a damaged or defective product. Please contact us if you run into any problems and we will be sure to make it right.


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Bragg organic olive oil, extra virgin, unrefined, cold pressed, contains no transfatty acids, and is made from a superb blend of 100% organically grown Arbequina olives that continually provides the best quality and flavor. Bragg olive oil has a delicious, smooth body with a light aftertaste. It adds the finest flavor and aroma to salads, vegetables, pastas, pestos, sauces, sautes, potatoes and most foods, even popcorn. In historic times, 400 BC, Hippocrates, the father of medicine used and wrote about the great health benefits of olive oil.
Produced in Greece, Bottled in USA in a plastic bottle.
INGREDIENTS: 100% Organic Olive Oil, Extra Virgin, Unrefined, Cold Pressed.
Gallon comes in a plastic bottle. Quart comes in a glass bottle.
Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 Tbsp (14 ml)
Nutrient Amount %DV
Calories 120
Calories from Fat 120
Total Fat 14 g 21%
Saturated Fat 2 g 10%
Polyunsaturated Fat 1 g
Monounsaturated Fat 10 g
Cholesterol 0 mg 0%
Sodium 0 mg 0%
Carbohydrates 0 g 0%
Protein 0 g
Condition | New |
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Your multitasking moisturizer, brightener, primer, concealer and SPF foundation!
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I was thrilled to be hunting with frequent NAHC contributor Judd Cooney one December not long ago. He operates Iowa Trophy Whitetail Outfitters ((970) 264-5612) not far from where he grew up. I had faith in Cooney's outfitting abilities and knew that big bucks roamed his Iowa properties.
I arrived the day before the December opener, and after I unloaded my gear, guide Andrew Warrington provided video evidence of a monster whitetail he'd filmed earlier in the season. That evening he and I did some scouting and spied a buck with a 150-class frame. Temperatures in the teens and blustery winds forced the big buck to feed with plenty of shooting light, but I had to sit back and watch because the season opener was still 14 hours away.
Unfortunately, that was the end of the show. The cold weather that forced the shooter buck into view was replaced with balmy temperatures more characteristic of a South Texas hunt. As much as I like the folks at The Weather Channel, I silently cursed at them each evening as they extended the warming trend across northwest Iowa. You could write the ending to this hunt: Warm temperatures led to no big buck sightings, and I headed home with memories of a great camp, but no buck.
Putting On The Feed Bag
The transition from "horny" to "had it" afflicts white-tailed bucks from Saskatchewan to Mexico. You can't ignore it. When "love is in the air," bucks move with relentless fervor, but when the air clears, bucks hunker down. The reason for their disappearing act is simple: Bucks lose anywhere from 20-25 percent of their body weight during the rut. They plan ahead by adding that much weight during the summer and into early fall, but losing that much weight pushes them dangerously close to the brink of death. According to Leonard Lee Rue III, in his book "The Deer of North America," he states a whitetail can lose up to 30 percent of its body weight and stay alive: "The critical point lies between 30 percent and 33 percent. A loss of a full third of its total body weight is almost always fatal."
So why should the weather play such a key role when bucks appear to be on death's doorstep? They need to eat, right? Even though bucks have Pooh's "rumbly in my tumbly" playing within, they take a careful approach to dining late in the season. After all, they've been hunted nonstop in most locales for the better part of 90 days. Paranoia alone causes them to stay put and keep a watchful eye for hunters and other predators that might be trying to take advantage of their weakened physical condition.
Evolution has also instilled whitetails with a "stay put" attitude for survival, and not just from warm-blooded predators. By bedding for long hours, day or night, whitetails conserve more energy. Whenever a buck is up and moving, he burns calories, and burning calories means burning fat. Depending on where a buck lives, research shows he might bed 70 percent or more of the day during the winter. Even bucks in the South bed longer after wearing themselves thin from the rut.
Despite the battle to conserve calories, whitetails, particularly bucks, know they must feed when the temperature plummets. Feeding requires a bold move to food sources. What makes a whitetail move in one latitude might not make another move elsewhere. Despite having more tolerable weather, Southern whitetails have a lighter winter coat and smaller bodies than their Northern cousins. When ice storms and the occasional winter storm blows through the heart of Dixie, it also pushes those whitetails living a Jimmy Buffet lifestyle to get up and stoke the fire by feeding.
Whitetails in the Northland might ignore a Dixie-style storm, but they can't ignore temperatures that fall below the teens, especially if inches or feet of snow accompany the icebox conditions. A couple years ago, I lost 2 days of hunting to a "storm of the century" in South Dakota. It literally shut down half of the state, and I couldn't get out of my rural home because of the drifting and zero-visibility conditions. Even after losing these hunting days, I knew conditions were perfect for success.
The rut was over and the bucks were beat. When the weather broke, I would've bet the farm on killing a buck. With feet of snow on the ground and temperatures in the subzero category, deer would be forced to move. It took a day and a half to get the job done, but I ended the season by ambushing a 61/2-year-old buck after he gorged on standing corn; he walked directly to me on his way to a nearby bedding location.
If you want weather to be in your back pocket on a post-rut hunt, you still have some homework to do besides watching the weather. First, you need to find the food. Look for high-energy food or the good stuff dieticians tell you to avoid—carbohydrates. Whitetails need more than 5 pounds of feed a day to survive, and even more if brutal winter conditions persist for any length of time.
As browsers, whitetails glean their daily nutrition from a variety of sources, but carbohydrates turn into energy quickly, which means heat. Corn provides much of the carb load for winter whitetails, but for deer living in corn-less regions, they resort to acorns and apples for energy needs, plus browse. That's not to say deer will ignore a late-season food plot that can stand above a snowfall of several inches and also provides energy through protein. Clovers, sugar beets and turnips provide great winter forage, as well as many food plot blends designed specifically for late-season whitetails. For example, I've had great success with Hunter's Specialties Vita-Rack Fall Mix in luring post-rut bucks within shooting range.
Besides waiting for a winter storm to roll in, you should also have pre-scouted your area to locate bedding cover. If thick cover is located nearby a food source, look for bucks to bed there because they often stay relatively close to food to conserve energy when traveling to and from the food source. In open country, however, deer might bed a mile or more away from food so they can distance themselves from the danger they perceive when exposing themselves in the open setting.
Late-season whitetail hunting is all about playing the weather. If you can hold out long enough, the weather will change and so will your success.
Late-Season Curve Balls
What if an intense high-pressure system sweeps in along with tropical winds and sunscreen days during your late-season deer hunt? You can employ three main strategies. First, use deer calls near food plots. Your grunts, rattles and bleats might just spark the interest of a weary buck and fool him into believing a hot doe has hit the scene. Second, you can still take a stand, but instead of setting up on the edge of a food source, move farther into the timber without ruffling a buck's bed sheets. You'll need to move far enough into cover to hopefully catch a buck sneaking from his bedroom to feed during the minutes before the end of shooting light. Finally, you can coordinate a deer drive. Try to push the deer past pre-set hunters with the hope one lucky hunter will have a window for a shot.
Photo caption:
Whitetails often bed in thick cover during the peak of a winter storm, but as soon as it's over, deer will travel to find food. By watching the weather forecast, you can be in the right place at the right time for an ambush.


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Mandate Pictures is banking on the notion that HBO's East Bound and Down star Danny McBride will make a convincing bully. Mandate has made a deal for Bullies, a comedy based on an original idea by McBride about two brothers who finally get a comeuppance after bullying people their whole lives. Yes Man scribes Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul will write the script. McBride will produce with his Rough House Pictures partners David Gordon Green, Jody Hill and Matt Reilly. Mandate's Nathan Kahane will be executive producer. McBride most recently wrapped the Universal comedy Your Highness.
Comment by Aaron Tesfai — Wednesday June 16, 2010 @ 3:35pm PDT
That is the most hilariously badass picture on DHD. Love it!
Comment by Nerd — Wednesday June 16, 2010 @ 3:49pm PDT
Sounds pretty damn funny to me.
Eastbound is insane, cant wait for season 2.
Comment by jim — Wednesday June 16, 2010 @ 4:41pm PDT
McBride is the man. EB&D2 will rule.
Comment by dvelopment — Wednesday June 16, 2010 @ 5:40pm PDT
not to play debbie downer, but once again McBride has aligned himself with a film that in no way is inherently commercial. You can play an asshole only so many times in your life.
Comment by Mike — Wednesday June 16, 2010 @ 11:46pm PDT
As long as this doesn't delay Season 2 of Eastbound & Down, sounds good to me.
Sorry, comments are closed for this article.


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