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Guests: Tom Brokaw, Robert Bazell, Savannah Guthrie, David Gregory, Robert Bazell, Andrea Mitchell, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Judd Gregg
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Good evening. I'm Chris Matthews in Washington. Former president Bill Clinton has been hospitalized in New York City after complaining of chest pains. A hospital source in New York tells NBC News that he went into the hospital under his own power and received a stent. President Clinton, who is 63, had successful bypass surgery back in 2004.
NBC's Savannah Guthrie is at the White House with the latest news.
Savannah, the president's condition?
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC CORRESPONDENT: We don't know. And in fact, Chris, there are very few details we have right now. We know he went to the hospital today with chest pains, that he had has apparently been outfitted with a stent for his heart. You mentioned he has had heart problems in the past, having had a quadruple bypass back in 2004. It's expected he'll spend the night in the hospital in New York. How serious this is we just don't know yet.
The White House is aware of this. Unclear at this point if the president has been told. However, I do know within the last hour, the press secretary was with the president in the Oval Office, so presumably, he would have briefed the president, Chris.
MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you, Savannah Guthrie. Let's go right now to David Gregory, who's with me here. He's moderator of "Meet the Press," and of course, on top of this story, as well—David.
DAVID GREGORY, "MEET THE PRESS": Well, Andrea Mitchell also reporting that the president—former president had chest pains, had talked about it with his doctor, and they had discussed having a stent. You talked about his history of heart disease, and we know people with heart disease and what the complications are like, even having had a quadruple bypass, which he had several years ago.
Just look at his schedule. This is a very vigorous former president, who has a rigorous schedule, whether it's getting involved in negotiating the release of those young women from North Korea or campaigning most recently for Martha Coakley up in Massachusetts. He is on the go. He appears to maintain a healthy weight. I can't speak to his diet precisely. But nevertheless, these are issues that keep creeping up on somebody who deals with it.
MATTHEWS: We just got a report—I just got it in my ear, David, that according to a spokesman for the former president, Bill Clinton, he's had two stents put in, in his coronary arteries. He's in good—here is the full statement from his spokesman today. "President Clinton was admitted to the Columbia campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital after feeling discomfort in his chest. Following a visit to his cardiologist, he underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. President Clinton's in good spirits and will continue to focus on the work of his foundation and Haiti relief and long-term recovery efforts. In 2004, the president underwent a successful quadruple bypass operation to free four blocked arteries."
Now, a lot of doctors will tell you this is maintenance, that...
GREGORY: Right.
MATTHEWS: ... it's the kind of thing you have to do if you have heart disease.
GREGORY: Absolutely. Look, I mean, my father has heart disease and has had procedures over time that has been exactly that...
MATTHEWS: Right.
GREGORY: ... maintenance, and has preserved his ability to work and maintain a certain schedule. And there's no reason to think it's not the case here. But heart disease is still heart disease.
MATTHEWS: Right.
GREGORY: It's the kind of thing that can keep creeping up and become very dangerous very fast.
MATTHEWS: Yes, and of course, you have the stents—they're done through open-heart surgery, they're put in through catheterization through your groin it's done. They're quite good at this right now and it's quite safe.
GREGORY: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: The president's probably very lucky to have gone to the hospital when he felt those symptoms.
There he is, our stock footage there of the president. I think it's interesting, David, they put out so quickly, his spokesperson up there in New York, that he is going to continue with the Haiti work. He is going to get back to work.
GREGORY: Right.
MATTHEWS: He may spend the night in the hospital, but I'm sure that that was optional. He probably is doing that just for safety.
GREGORY: And I interviewed him just several weeks ago, talking about his work in Haiti with former president Bush, as well, and he looked quite vigorous. I mean, he looked quite good at that point and has appeared to be in very good shape physically and has maintained that schedule, has since been to Haiti. So by all accounts, he's been just fine and has acted rather quickly when he did have signs of discomfort.
MATTHEWS: You know, it's amazing, we have a number of former presidents that are still in pretty good health and they're quite young relative to our presidents of the past.
Robert Bazell joins us right now with the expertise he has at hand, NBC News chief science and health correspondent. Robert, thank you for joining us. Give us a sense of the—well, the lack—I don't think it's urgent, this procedure, but tell us what you know.
BOB BAZELL, NBC CORRESPONDENT: Well, from the statement that we just heard from the Clinton people that you read, it sounds like it is not urgent in the sense that he did not have a heart attack. He had what he had before, which is the arteries to his heart were closing up. The last time he went to the hospital, after a lot of discussion among physicians, they decided to do the bypass surgery, where you bypass the blocked arteries.
This time, they decided to go in with the stent. As you properly described it, it goes through a wire called a catheter through the groin and then a balloon opens up the clogged arteries, and a piece of metal, the stent, which is like a piece of mesh metal, opens up the clogged artery, restoring the blood flow to the heart.
It's a very good sign that he—this was a procedure that went on over—a problem went on over a few days. In other words, he didn't have a sudden chest pain that might indicate a heart attack. He was again having the problem that led him to have the bypass before, which is a shortness of breath and feeling not particularly good because your heart isn't getting enough oxygen.
But it didn't come on suddenly, so all indications are is that this is not a terribly serious thing, as you said. It's become a very routine part of American medicine. Probably a million of these are done every year in the United States. And he—there's every indication that he will recover very soon.
MATTHEWS: You know, I think it's another statement, Robert, that we live in a very good time if you have heart disease, that we have this—as David said, your dad has it, and the fact that we're able to have this procedure available on such quick notice, without a heart attack, avoiding a heart attack, certainly extends your life.
BAZELL: Well, the biggest progress in American medicine in our time has been against heart disease. It used to be—it used to kill millions of people a year, and now it still does. It's the greatest killer. But the life expectancy is way greater now than it was before.
GREGORY: Also, you have a recognition on the part of the former president who has a very intense schedule, but is also very quick to respond to any symptoms, which appears to have been the case here.
MATTHEWS: Good for him. You know, good for him. He got in there, he dealt with the problem. He had some symptoms, he didn't say, This'll pass. Robert, that is just in terms of informing our viewers who care about the former president a lot and care about this situation of heart disease, the fact that he was—what I found—the only thing that was a little bit of a wrinkle was that he had the chest pains two days ago and had originally intended to go in yesterday, went in today. I guess we'll find out more about this in the hours ahead.
BAZELL: Well, exactly. But that also indicates that it was not a terribly serious problem. He wasn't to the point where he could barely get up out of a chair or walk across a room. It was something that was coming on slowly. He recognized it.
And of course, once you've had any kind of heart problem, whether it's a heart attack or bypass surgery or angioplasty or a stent, you become acutely aware of any symptoms all the time and you're watching yourself all the time. And it's very easy for heart patients to get confused between the kind of exhaustion that somebody like President Clinton would have from his frequent travels and—and just being out of breath because your heart is clogging up again.
So that was why he probably had—and we're guessing, of course, here
conversations with his physician before he decided to go in again. This is the same hospital, we should point out, where he had the heart surgery in 2003. So he is—you know, he's in good hands. It's a very big hospital.
And they're calling me right now, so let me take the call and I'll get back to you.
MATTHEWS: OK. Robert, thank you. I want to go to Andrea Mitchell, who's also covering this story. It's interesting, as Robert Bazell pointed out, to use the clinical term, the presentation is similar. If you had the symptoms before, it recurs in a similar fashion. A man of the IQ of this former president knows exactly what he's facing. Andrea, join us on this with what you have.
ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, he was in Haiti only earlier this week again, and a lot of questions have been raised at the State Department. There was a report in "The Miami Herald" and questions came up yesterday and again today at the State Department about an expanded role for Bill Clinton in Haiti, that the Haitian government was being—was considering a redevelopment organization that would be led jointly by leaders such as Bill Clinton. It was never denied he was going to be the outside person to help lead the reconstruction of Haiti.
So we know that he's been very active, very involved. Whether he's as physically fit as he was in the immediate aftermath of his previous surgery, and his physical regimen then—it seemed to me that in some of the pictures from Haiti this past week that perhaps he's put on little bit of weight. You know, that diet has always been an issue with him.
We know that his original surgery was back in 2004, that, in fact, in September of 2004, he was very ill, very ill indeed. But not long afterwards, about a month later, I was covering him out on the campaign trail for John Kerry in Philadelphia. I think you were there as well that day, Chris, so you know that he did...
MATTHEWS: I remember that day well.
MITCHELL: Exactly. And he didn't look so great then. But he began to really regain strength and activity. And he's been in terrific shape, as David Gregory can attest to having done that interview with him and with the other former president, George W. Bush, that very interesting day at the White House, David.
GREGORY: Right. The other thing is, the other prominent politician, Dick Cheney, the former vice president, who had a history of actual heart attack in his White House years, had a stent put in, had the kind of maintenance that he dealt with through that time. And it just goes to the original point that getting very good medical care, being on top of these symptoms, being really aware of what the symptoms are can reduce this to nothing more than maintenance, even when you have a very intense schedule, like a politician or former president.
MATTHEWS: Right.
MITCHELL: Well, speaking of...
MATTHEWS: Just to bring us up to date...
MITCHELL: Speaking of intense schedules...
MATTHEWS: ... on this—I have to bring people up to date on this, Andrea. Just a second. I want to tell people what's going on here. We're doing something unusual tonight, breaking into our usual lead here. The former president has gone into a New York hospital, New York Presbyterian, to have a couple of stents to put in, obviously, to deal with the fact that he's had some coronary problems and he's opening up those valves. And he's in good spirits, according to his spokesman. He's going to continue his hard work on Haiti.
It looks like, from my experience with this and knowledge of it, it's
about maintenance of a man who's had heart disease, had open heart a while
four—well, six years ago now, and has had to keep up with it. And this is the kind of thing that heart patients have to do from time to time.
Andrea, your thoughts on that.
MITCHELL: Well, I...
MATTHEWS: I think the people have to know the perspective here.
MITCHELL: Exactly. I just want to point out that he's back on the Columbia University campus of Presbyterian, of New York Presbyterian. And this is the place where he went after having first been taken to a Westchester County hospital closer to Chappaqua when he first had that heart experience, then taken to Columbia Presbyterian and to that exact campus. So he's probably dealing with the same doctors, who are familiar with his treatment.
Speaking of intense travel schedules, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was at the White House today for a meeting, or was scheduled to be at the White House, not covered by any of us, a private meeting with the president, and then was supposed to leave tomorrow. Still on her schedule to leave tomorrow for Doha, for Qatar, and then Saudi Arabia. So she's got a trip tomorrow that extends through Tuesday, and they say that trip is still scheduled. We don't know, obviously, until she leaves tomorrow night whether or not it's actually taking place—Chris.
MATTHEWS: Well, I think that makes perfect sense, given what we know so far. It is not an urgent situation. Robert Bazell has made that clear. David, as far as you know from your family history, this is something that goes on.
Again, the former president has had two stents placed in his arteries, his coronary arteries, to remove any blockage. It's a procedure which is fairly normal now and routine, in fact, and quite safe.
Here's Robert Bazell with more of the science. Robert, thank you.
BAZELL: Chris, yes, I just got a call from the hospital, and they were waiting for Clinton's people to release the statement that they confirmed exactly that it's true that he is in the hospital and he had two stents. It was probably done by Jeffrey Moses (ph), Dr. Jeffrey Moses, who's the head of the interventional cardiology there. Although I don't know that, it would seem like he would be the likely person to do it on someone of President Clinton's stature.
As we've been pointing out, this is very common. This is a man who has heart disease. And once you have heart disease, you have it for life, no matter how much medication you take, no matter how much you watch your weight and watch your exercise and watch your diet.
And I don't think that his traveling has a lot to do with bringing on the symptoms. I think it's much more that he's somebody who's predisposed to having that clogged—plaque buildup in the artery that clogs the artery, the blood flow to the heart, and that needs to be opened up sometimes if it gets too bad. But these stents are becoming very routine. I think there are in the neighborhood of a million of them a year.
He will probably be in the hospital for a few days because they want to make sure that they don't close up again, which is a common problem with them. They can do that sometimes. It happened with Vice President Cheney when he had his stent. So it's—he'll be fine, by all indications, but he will be in the hospital probably—certainly overnight and probably for a few days after that.
MATTHEWS: OK. Robert Bazell, it's great having you. Thank you so much for the update. I don't think we can get a better report than that right now. As we said, his spokesman, the former president, made clear that he's had two stents put in. The hospital has now confirmed that to Robert Bazell.
And just to get the statement out again, he underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. The president's in—the former president's in very good spirits. He'll continue to focus on the work of his foundation and Haiti's relief and long-term recovery efforts down there. And apparently, based upon your reporting and others, he's going to be quite vigorous in his public activities.
GREGORY: And we can just report, as well, that the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, is now headed to New York City, as you would expect.
MATTHEWS: You can confirm that now?
GREGORY: Yes, we're just getting that word.
MATTHEWS: So she's not changing her plans because of this.
GREGORY: Well, it doesn't appear that way. I don't know what her—in terms of the travel plans tomorrow, but she is headed up to New York City presumably to be with him, so...
MATTHEWS: On the way to Qatar.
GREGORY: Yes, if she's on the way, we'll see what her travel plans are tomorrow.
MATTHEWS: Well, thank you. Great reporting from everybody.
It looks like it's not an urgent situation. It's a routine matter for people who have heart disease. You have to do this once in a while, get some stents put in. That's what the former president did today after experiencing chest pains over the last couple of days.
Our NBC reporters are staying with us throughout this story. Much more on president—former president Clinton, who's been hospitalized, as we said, up in New York, probably spend the night there, then get out. Anyway, thank you, everyone. Senator Judd Dodd—Judd Gregg is coming up next.
MATTHEWS: Former president Bill Clinton has been hospitalized in New York City, as we've been reporting. He's undergone a procedure to receive two stents in his coronary arteries. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton has left Washington for New York to be with the former president.
Dr. Nancy Snyderman is chief medical editor NBC News. She joins us now from Vancouver. Doctor, thank you for joining us.
DR. NANCY SNYDERMAN, NBC MEDICAL EDITOR: Hi, Chris.
MATTHEWS: You know, I guess people are surprised by this, but it has become somewhat routine in heart medicine, the implantation of stents.
SNYDERMAN: Well, it's become routine, but I guess I'm going to be a -
not quite as rosy as everyone else who's gone before me, and that's to underscore that because heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, for anyone who's already had problems, like President Clinton, anytime you're exhausted or don't feel well, it's a sign that there could be trouble. And for men to wait for that crushing chest pain as a sign of a heart attack is really putting off a potential problem.
So if anything, I think what we've learned today is that if you've gone through a vessel bypass or if you've had stents put in, and you suddenly don't feel well and you can't explain it, you can't put off seeing a physician. You need to get to the hospital right away.
MATTHEWS: So a general lack of wellbeing? Is that how you'd describe it, or a general exhaustion? What would you call a key symptom for having a heart—a potential heart attack, is what we're talking about here?
SNYDERMAN: You know, when you say, As a man who's had heart disease, I just don't feel well, and it's hard to describe, or it's overwhelming exhaustion or shortness of breath, that's all the more reason to play it safe. We know from autopsies done in children who have died from other illnesses that that kind of early heart disease in our country can be seen as early as toddlers.
So the fact that President Clinton had his blood vessels bypassed in 2004, and not stents, is an indication that the heart disease was rather severe. We know that. So because he is, I think, sort of the face of heart disease for so many men who lead—to really huge, big, bold lives, there's a lot for all of us to learn from him. He lost weight. He's never been a cigarette smoker. He changed his diet. He's been good about exercise. Those are all really positive things.
But once you have heart disease, you have heart disease. So to think that the stents are no big deal is like being a little bit pregnant. It is a big deal and you have to address it.
MATTHEWS: And how do you? How does a man like Bill Clinton, who's working on AIDS with the Clinton Global Initiative, with all those—work he's doing in Africa, with his social life, with his—just his business, how does he address it? Not eat—no more hamburgers? Is that what we're talking? He doesn't smoke.
SNYDERMAN: Well, look, yes, it does mean no more hamburgers.
And, look, I know how trite this is going to sound, but you have to dial in to some intuitive part in your body where you start to balance what you feel in your gut and what you feel in your chest. And I know it's hard for people who are driven and who are never on the right time zone and who are real go-getters, but you have to find that spot, because so many times in heart disease, there isn't just one single easy symptom, like crushing chest pain.
Sometimes, it can be something as nebulous as overwhelming nausea, or not feeling well, or, frankly, just not being on your game. And, if you experience that, and you have a history of heart disease, all the more reason you have to see your heart doctor or an emergency room physician immediately. You can't put these things off for two days.
MATTHEWS: Well, let's talk about what happened today with the president. Two days ago, he experienced chest pains. He called his doctor, his cardiologist in New York. He made an appointment. For whatever reason, it didn't happen until today. He went in for the procedure.
What—what do you think went on when he went in? Did he get a stress test when he showed up, or did they move immediately with the catheterization?
SNYDERMAN: Well, it's hard to tell. You know, these are physicians who know him intimately. And they know better than anybody what the insides of his blood vessels look like.
VIPs many times sort of go to the top of the diagnostic list of procedures. So, the idea of his having an angiography right away is not really out of the question.
And the real secret to whether you can put a stent in is whether the blood vessel disease is localized and not too long. You know, the problem with stents is, they're only so long. So, if the blood vessel is damage is longer than the stent, it doesn't do much good. And that's why he had coronary artery bypass in 2004.
But, obviously, they must have thought that they could get through this blockage, slip those stents in, and restore the blood supply to his heart.
MATTHEWS: Now, what would be his prognosis, besides perhaps safety overnight at the hospital tonight? What would he have to do? Will the doctors say take it easy, begin a more boring lifestyle? Would they say, you have to eat even less, be even skinnier, do more exercise?
What would a—or would a doctor say, you know, this is a—this is the gene pool you were born in, and this is what you have as part of your genetic reality? What will the doctors say to him?
SNYDERMAN: They will tell a little—they will throw a little bit of everything at him, knowing darn well that the patient they're speaking to probably isn't going to slow down, that he has a crazy life, that he's going to be jumping all over the world.
They know who they're speaking to. The idea that he's probably already on statins and aspirin and leading a cleaner life with regard to his diet and exercise, they know that. He has been a patient who's conformed to the routine.
But, at the end of the day, we are what we eat as teenagers and young adults. Stress plays a role. So, all of those things together—they will go back to square one, and they will reiterate everything. And he will be a very good patient.
But a reminder again that, for all of us who have been in this kind of situation, you have to figure out when you're not at the top of your game, and that's when you have to check it out with your authority figures. And, for President Clinton, those authority figures are his cardiologists.
MATTHEWS: Well, in all seriousness, if he were to go retreat into an abbey somewhere and eat carrots for the rest of his life, would that really change that much?
SNYDERMAN: No, I mean...
MATTHEWS: I mean, isn't this a lot of this just how he was born?
SNYDERMAN: Well, I don't think—that's—but that's not the point. No one's telling him to go eat carrots and alfalfa sprouts and meditate for the rest of his life. I mean, we know that that's not the issue. But it's a compounded series of factors, diet, exercise, stress.
You know, he's been a very good patient. He's listened to everybody.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
SNYDERMAN: And we have watched him shed his—shed the weight. And we know he's been in touch with his physicians. But, at the end of the day, once a heart patient, always a heart patient.
And when you don't feel well, you can't just say, well, I was in Haiti last week. I'm exhausted. That might be true. But you still have to pick up the phone. You have to make a call to those physicians. And if they say, get in here, you can't put them off for two days. That means get in.
MATTHEWS: Oh, boy. Great advice. I think the two bits of advice are so powerful and easy to understand. One is that general sense of not feeling good. And a lot of people just assume that's just the way things are. They're feeling low.
SNYDERMAN: That's right.
MATTHEWS: And, in fact, it means something in terms of your health.
SNYDERMAN: It does mean something.
MATTHEWS: It means something serious.
SNYDERMAN: It means a lot.
It means a lot.
MATTHEWS: And, secondly, to do something about it, and to do something like call your doctor.
I think you're so helpful to a lot of people watching tonight, as well as those just covering this big news story, the president getting the two stents in his coronary arteries today, which—well, we will—we will talk more about.
It's great having an expert as a colleague. Nancy Snyderman, Doctor, thank you so much for joining us.
SNYDERMAN: Thank you.
MATTHEWS: We will be sticking with you as this story continues here tonight. We will have much more on the condition of former President Bill Clinton, an active man who had to go into the hospital today to get two stents for his coronary arteries. Some would call this maintenance. Others would call it a serious warning. Others are just saying this is part of our education about what heart disease means, and it means it never goes away.
The former president up in New York City, let's all pray for him—back after this.
MATTHEWS: Former President Bill Clinton had two stents inserted into one of his coronary arteries a while back. He's been—been hospitalized up in New York City with chest pains, and the procedure's already taken place. And he's apparently in good spirits. He's going to get back to work fairly soon, after spending the night in the hospital.
Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire was elected to the Senate back in 1992, the same year that President Clinton won the presidency.
We wanted to talk to you about health care. Let's talk about the former president's health care.
SEN. JUDD GREGG ®, NEW HAMPSHIRE: Yes.
MATTHEWS: We all love—this former president is quite a figure in our lives.
GREGG: Sure.
MATTHEWS: And he has to look out for his health, like so many of us. Your thoughts about this guy's hyperbolic—I don't know what the right word is.
MATTHEWS: This man leads quite a life.
GREGG: He sure does. And we're all hoping he's doing well. And Kathy and I certainly wish him the best. And it sounds like he is, from the reports I have been listening on your show here, Chris.
I think served the governor when he was governor of Arkansas and then had the chance to serve him when he was president in the Senate. You know, I can't think of anything worse for your heart probably than running for governor in Arkansas four or five times, as he did. Think of all the barbecues he had to eat.
GREGG: And then moving on—moving on to the presidency's job, you can't even quantify the stress of the presidency. You can't quantify it.
And, so, obviously, he's been through a lot. But he's in good shape, or at least he always appear to be in good shape when I have talked to him and met him. And he's obviously still leading an extraordinarily active life.
MATTHEWS: Right.
GREGG: What he's doing in Haiti is spectacular, in my opinion. And we just wish him the best, just wish him the best.
MATTHEWS: You know, it's so interesting, Senator, about former presidents. I remember watching Kennedy's inauguration back in '61, as you did, and my dad saying to me, the happiest man in that room or on that stage is Ike Eisenhower, because he doesn't have the—the pressure on him anymore.
GREGG: Yes.
MATTHEWS: And yet here's a fellow that looks like he wants more pressure. He keeps going back into the arena, facing the lions, if you will, again and again, helping his wife run for president the other—two years ago now, with all the stress...
GREGG: Right.
MATTHEWS: ... and mayhem of any presidential campaign.
GREGG: Well, what he's doing, I think, is exactly what former presidents should do, and what I think we're seeing George W. Bush start to do, and what clearly Jimmy Carter did.
And that's use the status of his personal position, which was president of the United States, leader of the free world, to try to advance very important issues relative to making the world and the country better. And he's certainly done that, extraordinarily, I think.
And what he—as I said, what he's doing in Haiti is extraordinary. But he has a whole series of things he's pursued here since he's been president, which have been just goodwill missions that raise not only the issue that he's on, makes that—makes that addressed more effectively, but it also raises, I think, people's respect for him, and for our nation, because he is obviously a senior statesman in our nation, although he's not quite that old, quite honestly. He's the same age as I am.
MATTHEWS: He's not old at all.
You know, Lyndon Johnson died at the age of 64, and we thought he was 100 years old at the time. Of course, he smoked and drank and he didn't exactly take care of himself after he left the presidency.
Well, you're a politician, Senator, and I respect you for that. And wonder if you could give us some insight into why a man like Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton. I mean, the pressure that he seeks in life, he doesn't want to go sit and eat carrots and live in a monastery.
GREGG: No, you know, there—there is this—I don't know what they call it—AAA personality, or this desire to go out and be productive and contribute. And, obviously, he has it in—in just—at a very high level. He wants very much to have an impact. And he has had an extraordinary impact, obviously, president of the United States, obviously governor of Arkansas for many terms, and now a senior statesman.
But it—it—there are certain personalities who pursue these very challenging lifestyles, which put a lot of stress, not only on you, but, more importantly, on your families. I mean, you have got to remember, your families are—are living and dying, or living and suffering with the same things that you're going through every day, but they can't go out and sort of take on the folks in a public way. They just have to experience it.
So, it is an extraordinarily intense experience to get engaged in the ring. But, you know, Theodore Roosevelt said, you either get in the ring or you're not going to have much of a life. And that's a paraphrase, by the way.
MATTHEWS: Yes, I know.
GREGG: He said it much more eloquently.
But, as a very practical meantime, that's the truth. You know, you either get in and try to change things, or what the heck. What are you doing?
MATTHEWS: Well, that was at the Sorbonne speech.
But I have to tell you, the one thing that the man we're looking at
right now, the former president who had the two stents put into his
coronary arteries, owes a lot to the Granite State. And I was just asking
now that I have you...
GREGG: He does, by the way. But he's been very appreciative of it, too. He's always been—he and his wife, Hillary, have been extremely attentive to the people here in New Hampshire for years.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about that grab. What hold does this man we're looking at with Senator Clinton—she got herself back into that campaign two years ago by winning up in New Hampshire...
GREGG: Yes.
MATTHEWS: ... pulling the upset against Barack Obama. He made himself the comeback kid back in '92, when you won that year, pulling a big upset.
GREGG: Yes.
MATTHEWS: Well, he almost beat Paul Tsongas, having been way back in the polls.
GREGG: Right.
MATTHEWS: What is it about New Hampshire and this guy? The Granite State, live free or die types, seem to like this Democrat—both of them.
GREGG: Well, I think—I think he has a natural way of communicating with people, and always has. And it's—his greatest strength is his ability to make people feel comfortable about who he is and what he's about. And that has always been the truth of his success, or the essence of his success.
In Hillary's case, I think she came here, and she was sort of down, obviously, after Iowa. And she came here and just showed herself for being the person that she is, and not only a very strong person, as an individual, with very strong views, but also a person who is sensitive, and willing to show that—that side of her, which she really wasn't before.
You know, there was that question that was asked over in Portsmouth where she got quite emotional about it. And I think people said, wow, you know, I like that. I like the fact that she's not only a strong individual, but she can show a little emotion.
So, they have always connected extraordinarily well here in New Hampshire. And equally important, as I said earlier, they stayed in touch. You know, they never said, after New Hampshire, left the state and never came back. They always come back. And they come back fairly regularly over the years.
MATTHEWS: Well, you know, I guess we're going to talk a lot about the president's health in the next hour. And I have to tell you, thank you for coming.
GREGG: Pleasure.
MATTHEWS: You know, Senator, I have to get back to the point you made, Senator, the interesting personality aspect of our health.
A couple of months ago, we were at Cafe Milano, which is a big hangout here in Washington. You know, some strange customers hang around there sometimes, but the former—former president was in there one night. And we were having an NBC party, and I walked into the room, and he had come in and said hello to us.
And there he was surrounded by 20 people having this gigantic dinner with all these people. And I said, why does this guy need this? Why doesn't he just go home and relax? And he was out there sort of entertaining 20 people at a time at one table.
It was—it's—we all are who we are. And there we are—by the way, we're looking at these great stock pictures of the former president doing what he likes to do. And it's in—he's in the arena all the time.
GREGG: Yes, absolutely. Did you check what he was eating? I hope he was eating correctly.
MATTHEWS: I don't know. It's pretty rich food over there.
But, anyway—anyway, well, thank you. We're going to talk to you later tonight in our second edition about the hope we have for a—we do have it here at HARDBALL—for some kind of a compromise on health care.
Senator Judd Gregg, we will be back to you for our second edition at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
Still ahead, we will be joined by NBC's Tom Brokaw, who is out of Vancouver. He's going to talk about former President Clinton. He's been doing some reporting about that.
The former president is up in New York, a New York City hospital, spending the night, after having two stents placed in his coronary artery. He's apparently in good shape, good spirits, according to his spokesman. He's going to get through this thing. He has heart disease. He's tending to it. That's the good news.
We will be right back after this.
MATTHEWS: As we have been reporting, former President Bill Clinton went into the New York Presbyterian Hospital up at Columbia University today after experiencing chest pains for the last couple of days. He had a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. He's in fine shape and good spirits, according to his spokesman. All the reports are very positive.
Secretary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, will be going up to visit him on her way on a long-term trip—longtime-planned trip out of the country. So, everything looks pretty OK for the former president.
Let's bring in NBC's Tom Brokaw, who's up there in Vancouver getting ready for the Olympics. And he's been following this story and doing some reporting on it.
Tom, thank you for joining us.
TOM BROKAW, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: My pleasure, Chris. Well, I don't know a lot more to add to all that. Obviously it lit up his staff all over the world, they're in touch with each other. I said to one of them, I hope this is going to be good news when he told me that the statement would be coming out. I said we all do. I think that they're feeling that way. Look, I'm not a physician, I'm not Nancy, but I do think as a man of a certain age, that these are, again, wakeup calls.
And the president has been pushing himself very hard. In modern medicine, you can live with stents. But he's probably going to have to do a lifestyle check of some kind, as a result of this experience. You know, on the other hand, former vice president Dick Cheney has had stents and heart attacks and he is still going strong and any number of other people are. The advances in cardiac medicine are astonishing in so many ways. The president was very proud of how he had changed his habits after he had had the first episode. Now, whether he stayed with that or not, I don't know. I do know that he has been pushing himself very hard on a schedule. We've been working with him on getting him to sit down to reflect on his generation, the baby boomer generation. And it's where in the world is Bill Clinton today. So maybe this will be a wakeup call.
MATTHEWS: You have to wonder, Tom, every time you go to a doctor, he'll tell you it's a combination. You say, what's causing this? He'll say it's a combination of things. And it will be your diet, your lack of exercise, your genes. And there's always the temptation to fall back on the genes and say this is the way it is. I guess the former president has the same situation everyone else on this planet does, that you're sort of your physical outlook is a function somewhat of who your parents are, what sort of genes you inherited and also your habits.
But you've got to wonder, Tom, you know him very well that your sort of metabolism, here's a man of action who gets out there, who wants to get up in the morning and live, who doesn't want to go off and sort of mentally or physically retire.
BROKAW: Well, no. But you can live and still take care of yourself. You know, we all, after a certain age, I think fall into patterns where we say, maybe I'll skip the cardio exercise this morning. Or maybe I don't want to work that hard at it.
And it is a constant in your life. You know, I go through that myself. As you know, I've worked out pretty hard most of my life. But I let it slide if I get on the road for a long time. I'm on an airplane early in the morning, until late at night. Or then I get to wherever I'm going and I really don't want to do that. So I don't know what his regimen has been. But I hope that he has been working hard.
But if you just watch him for the last couple of weeks alone, all the late nights and going down to Haiti, coming back, being at the U.N., raising the money, rocketing around the world in a lot of other ways, I just don't know how much time he's had to take care of that regular physical regimen that you should be doing.
And by the way, there have been a lot of advances in that, for especially men of Bill Clinton's age. And dare I say I'm older than he is, and for me as well, about what they're learning about how you exercise. More accelerated bursts, always doing something cardio every day. And I don't know whether he's been after that or not.
MATTHEWS: Well, Tom, you look in fabulous shape. I want to ask you about the president's sort of mission in life. You've got a mission in life, too. I mean, the man drives himself for a reason. I think he does want to be a citizen of the world. He has grand—I don't mean ambitions in a narrow sense. You know him very well. Tell me, if you can, what drives him these days. What makes Bill Clinton get up in the morning?
BROKAW: I think it's built into his DNA, frankly. I think it's been that way since he was a boy wonder in Hope, Arkansas, and Little Rock, Arkansas. He always wanted to be the guy at the head of the parade, doing things. He loved running for student council president, running for Congress from Arkansas, running, as you know, for governor know, losing, then going back and running again running for president when he was an unlikely choice for that.
And I also think he wants in some fashion to make his place in history more prominent and more permanent. He went out of the White House with a lot of good feeling. But there was still that deep scar that was left over from the Monica Lewinsky affair in which he lied under federal oath. Impeachment proceedings were initiated against him.
And I think he now wants to spend the rest of his life trying to show that Bill Clinton was more than that. I thought it was very heartening the other day when he showed up with President George W., when he showed up with President Bush the 43rd, George W. Bush, and to see these two young men, baby boomers really, I think of them still as being young, coming together as they were great political adversaries, and saying we can do more now for the world by working together. Not just the two of them, but the country, and how we have kind of common ground to pursue.
MATTHEWS: I think you're right. I think that's a good analysis. I think he is kind of a Joseph Conrad character, a Lloyd Jim (ph), a man who wants to—like we all do, redeem any flaws in the past. And end on a good note in life and to leave a good biography, if you will. I think it's fascinating. What did you make of Dr. Nancy Snyderman's talk about the fact that at a certain age, you have to begin to recognize symptoms, they call them in medicine, presentations. If you've had chest pains, if you had that general sense of not feeling good, act on it?
BROKAW: Well, I wake up in the morning testing all my pains aptly. But you do think about it a lot more. I mean, I've read every account there is of people I don't know and people I do know who have had heart attacks. And apparently it's unmistakable. I mean, if you're at all alert to your body, when you—when the heart starts to go wrong, you really know that.
Now, we all have those episodes when you say, I wonder if that's something going on there. I'm pretty careful about that stuff. And, you know, you're coming out of the holiday season, incidentally, where you probably were a little more intemperate in how you ate or what you did. But yes, in fact, you do have to pay more attention to it.
But the good news is, and in President Clinton's case, I think Nancy would agree with me on this, that we've made so many advances in cardiac treatment and treating exactly these kinds of conditions. And there's no better place in the world than Columbia Presbyterian to get that done.
MATTHEWS: Great. It's all great information for us all. Thank you, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who is right next to you there, and thank you, Tom Brokaw, out there in Vancouver. The weather looks nice. They don't have the snow we have here, but they have some. Anyway, thank you both for that late reporting there. We're going to be right back more to talk about the president's condition as we finish up this first edition of HARDBAL tonight. We'll be back, by the way, at 7:00 Eastern with more on the president's health. But of course, the big stories tonight, it looks to be like there might be a break-through, a small glimmer of light on the possibility of a health care break-through which will include some bipartisan help from a certain Republican senator named Judd Gregg. We'll be talking to him. We'll be right back with more of this episode of HARDBALL. Actually it's an edition of HARDBALL. We'll be right back.
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT: On this day with high hopes and brave hearts in massive numbers, the American people have voted to make a new beginning.
MATTHEWS: That was former president Bill Clinton celebrating his presidential victory back in 1992. He had just defeated the first President Bush, Bush 41. Tonight he is in a New York hospital having received two stents in a coronary artery. And we've heard before, Bush 41, he says, "We have been in touch with President Clinton's staff and of course Barbara and I wish him a speedy and full recovery." That's from the man who was defeated back in '92.
Let's bring back NBC News chief of science and health correspondent Bob Bazell. It's so great to be with you, Bob. Just give us a background on the president's health, how he got to today, what he did today, what was done for him.
ROBERT BAZELL, NBC NEWS CHIEF SCIENCE & HEALTH CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill Clinton has cardiovascular disease and he is certainly not alone in that. It's so common that 1 million of these stent operations are done every year in the United States. Now Chris, when you think there's about what, 315 million Americans, that gives you an idea of the immensity of this—how common this treatment is and how relatively safe it is. Most of these people do just fine. He will probably spend the night in the hospital.
But what happens is cardiovascular disease is a progressive condition where plaque, the material that contains cholesterol builds up in the arteries and eventually starts knocking off blood flow to the heart. Now if the plaque ruptures and causes a complete blockage, that's a heart attack. And that can cause muscle damage to the heart. We have to emphasize over and over again, even though President Clinton had bypass surgery in 2004 and he had two stents put in today, he has never had a heart attack.
So there's no evidence or reason to think to think that he has damage to his heart and muscle. And therefore there's no reason to think that there's anything that's going to happen in the future that's going to slow him down. You were just talking to our colleague Tom Brokaw who was talking about President Clinton's stressful lifestyle, but there's a lot of debate among cardiologists about whether that kind of an active lifestyle actually causes heart disease. Actually, I think most people these days don't think it does, and the idea of telling somebody to slow down because they have heart disease is not what would happen. I think you're going to see that he'll get a much higher dose of medication to bring down his cholesterol even further and he'll be told to get back on the road and do what he does best. Maybe he needs more cardiovascular specific exercise, but moving around doesn't cause heart attacks—heart disease.
MATTHEWS: You know, now that we are on the topic and we're talking about the former president and the fact that he had two stents put in and some people consider that maintenance, and some think it's more serious than that, but the question comes back to what do you do about it? And you know, you hear so many stories of people who retire at maybe 65, 67 and don't live another six months. And then—
BAZELL: Yeah. That is—
MATTHEWS: that makes your point.
BAZELL: It does make the point. And then I think that the relationship—stress that causes heart disease is the kind of stress where a person loses his or her job and can't support the family. That stress has been shown in both animals and human beings to cause heart disease. That is stress. That's not the stress of an active person who is having a fulfilling life. That is certainly the description of Bill Clinton.
MATTHEWS: I love that analysis because it's the way I want to live. Thank you Robert, stick with us. We will be back with Robert Bazell to give us more an update and more of an analysis about what the former president went through today, with the procedure he went through at New York Presbyterian up at Columbia University. We'll be right back with more on former president Bill Clinton. This is going to be the front page news story tomorrow.
MATTHEWS: We are back with Robert Bazell talking about the former president's condition. We have been reporting now for an hour that former president Bill Clinton has been admitted into New York Presbyterian Hospital up at Columbia University for the implanting of two stents in his coronary artery. Dr. Bazell, just give us a sense, we only have a minute or two, for the people now to have a good update on the president's outlook.
BAZELL: First of all, Chris, I am not a doctor, but I have got to tell you that his outlook is very good. Many of the cardiologists I have spoken to say the usual procedure here is that the person spends one night in the hospital. They're little bit groggy when it is over, they go home and then they go home and they have to take it easy for about a week to make sure that everything is all right. The big danger it will close up again.
Again, we have to emphasize, President Clinton neither during his 2004 bypass surgery nor today did he have a heart attack. He just had a closing off of the blood supply to his heart. Both were remedied by these procedures and there is every reason to believe that he can go back to living a life that was as every bit as active as it was before he has had these procedures.
MATTHEWS: Was he under anesthesia for these stents being put in?
BAZELL: He's under a mild anesthesia where he remains conscious but he was not under the kind of anesthesia that makes you unconscious. So he would have been up and very aware of what was going the entire time and talking to the doctors and I'm sure he was cracking jokes, knowing him.
MATTHEWS: And how soon will he be back on his feet?
BAZELL: He will be able to go home probably tomorrow. I can't say for sure, they might keep him an extra night. That decision will be made tomorrow, but he is not going to be in the hospital for a very long time and he'll probably rest at home for about a week before he goes back on the road again to do the things that he has been doing so well in the last few weeks and months.
MATTHEWS: Robert Bazell, thank you so much for the reporting on the president's condition today and the procedure he went through. Everyone is happy that it's behind him and the president is going to be back on the road again soon, the former president. We'll be right back ourselves, an hour from now with a live eastern, 7 Eastern edition of HARDBALL, a second edition tonight all about the big political stories tonight, including the possibility of a deal on health care. It's time now for "The Ed Show" with Ed Schultz.
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Fay Report: Investigation of 205th Military Intelligence Brigade's Activites in Abu Ghraib Detention Facility
This report discusses an investigation into the alleged abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib Detention Facility. The investigation was ordered initially by LTG Ricardo S. Sanchez, Commander, Combined Joint Task Force Seven (CJTF-7). LTG Sanchez ...
Oversight Report, Investigative File (AR 15-6)
Ricardo Sanchez, George R. Fay, Paul J. Kern, Anthony R. Jones, Geoffrey D. Miller, Donald J. Ryder, Antonio Taguba, Barbara G. Fast, Walter Wojdakowski, Thomas G. Miller, Janis Leigh Karpinski, Thomas Pappas, Jerry Phillabaum, Ivan L. Frederick, II, Charles A. Graner, Jr., Steven L. Jordan, Carolyn A. Wood, L. Paul Bremer, Colin L. Powell, Robert P. Walters Jr, Marc Warren, Sabrina D. Harman, Romie Leslie Brownlee, Lynndie Rana England, Daniel Kazmier, Franklin D. Raab, Steven Boltz, David M. Price, L. Potter, Dennis E. Stevanus, Aldo Fierro, Varej Filhanessian, George O'Kane, Anthony Cavallaro, David O. Sutton, First Sergeant McBride, Staff Sergeant Hannifan, Staff Sergeant Cole, David W. DiNenna, Sr. , Sergeant Spiker, Darrell Jarred Plude , Joshua R. Claus, Sergeant Presnell, Sergeant Lawson, Michael D. Thompson
Use of water, Water dousing, Other, Physical assault, Walling, Sexual, General, Threat, Assault/death, Use of electricity, Stress positions, Cramped confinement, Use of phobias, Sleep deprivation, Isolation, Dietary manipulation, Environmental manipulation, Light or sound, Temperature, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity, Other Humiliation, Sexual, Religious, Forced grooming, Other
Janis Leigh Karpinski, Ricardo Sanchez, Antonio Taguba, Ivan L. Frederick, II, Charles A. Graner, Jr., Javal Sean Davis, Megan M. Ambuhl, Sabrina D. Harman, Jeremy C. Sivits, Lynndie Rana England, Joseph M. Darby, Scott Bobeck, Jerry Phillabaum, Donald J. Ryder, Jason Kennel, Thomas Pappas, Steven Jordan, Geoffrey D. Miller, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Ricardo Sanchez
EIT, Use of water, Water dousing, Other, Physical assault, General, Face slap or insult slap, Stomach/abdominal slap, Sexual, Threat, Assault/death, Use of electricity, Environmental manipulation, Hooding/Goggling, Nudity, Other Humiliation, Sexual

subset: commoncrawl


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State Dept: Security at Libya consulate adequate
State Department officials are telling Congress that security levels at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya were adequate for the threat level on the anniversary of 9/11. But they also said the compound was overrun by an "unprecedented attack" by dozens of heavily armed extremists.
Testifying before an election-season congressional hearing on alleged security failures at the consulate that led or contributed to the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, senior officials said the number of U.S. and local security guards at the compound was consistent with what had been requested by the post.
Deputy Secretary of State Charlene Lamb told the panel, quote, "We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11."
She's the State Department official in charge of protecting American embassies and consulates around the world.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
The former head of a 16-member U.S. military team in Libya said Wednesday the consulate in Benghazi, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, never had the forces it needed to protect itself.
Lt. Col, Andrew Wood told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that U.S. security was so weak that in April, only one U.S. diplomatic security agent was stationed in Benghazi.
The committee hearing followed assertions Tuesday night by the State Department that it never concluded that the Sept. 11 attack stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in what the administration now says was a terrorist attack.
Asked about the administration's initial - and since retracted - explanation linking the violence to protests over the anti-Muslim video circulating on the Internet, one official said, "That was not our conclusion."
He called it a question for "others" to answer, without specifying. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, and provided no evidence that might suggest a case of spontaneous violence or angry protests that went too far.
It was a top administration diplomatic official - U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice - who gave a series of interviews five days after the attack that wrongly described the attack as spontaneous.
She said the administration believed the violence was unplanned and that extremists with heavier weapons "hijacked" the protest against the anti-Islamic video. She did qualify her remarks to say that was the best information she had at the time. Rice since has denied trying to mislead Congress.
Meantime, the White House said Wednesday that top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan has met in Tripoli with President Mohamed Magariaf and others and has discussed ways Libya can better help the United States track down those responsible for the deaths.
In statements immediately after the attack, neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton mentioned terrorism. And both gave credence to the notion that the attack was related to protests about the anti-Islam video.
"Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet," Clinton said on the night of the attack. "The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."
Wood, who is a member of the Utah National Guard, said, "The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there."
"The situation remained uncertain and reports from some Libyans indicated it was getting worse. Diplomatic security remained weak. In April there was only one U.S. diplomatic security agent stationed there," he said. "The RSO (regional security officer) struggled to obtain additional personnel there but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with," Wood added.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has alleged that the State Department turned aside pleas from its diplomats in Libya to increase security in the months and weeks before the attack in Benghazi. One scheduled witness Wednesday, Eric Nordstrom, is the former chief security officer for U.S. diplomats in Libya, who told the committee his pleas for more security were ignored.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and GOP members of Congress have increasingly sharpened their criticism of the administration's initial explanation of the attack. They said they never accepted the original explanation.
Nordstrom addressed the diplomatic security issue in an Oct. 1 email to a congressional investigator. He said his requests for more security were blocked by a department policy to "normalize operations and reduce security resources."
A memo Tuesday by the Oversight Committee's Democratic staff provided details of Nordstrom's interview with the panel's investigators. In that interview, Nordstrom said he sent two cables to State Department headquarters in March 2012 and July 2012 requesting additional diplomatic security agents for Benghazi, but he received no responses.
He stated that Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary for international programs, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi artificially low. He said Lamb believed the Benghazi facilities did not need any diplomatic security special agents because there was a residential safe haven to fall back to in an emergency.
Nordstrom's Oct. 1 memo to the congressional investigator said, "You will note that there were a number of incidents that targeted diplomatic missions and underscored the GoL's (government of Libya) inability to secure and protect diplomatic missions.
"This was a significant part of (the diplomatic) post's and my argument for maintaining continued DS (diplomatic security) and DOD (Department of Defense) security assets into Sept/Oct. 2012; the GoL was overwhelmed and could not guarantee our protection.
"Sadly, that point was reaffirmed on Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi."


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NEA President says it is time to fix the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
WASHINGTON - March 14, 2011 -
In a speech at a Virginia middle school, President Barack Obama called on Congress to update the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) before the start of the next school year. The National Education Association (NEA) agreed that it's time to fix the law and thanked the President for his strong commitment to education and to reforming ESEA.
"It is time to fix the law," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of NEA. "We must move beyond No. 2 pencils and fill-in-the-bubble tests. We must set high standards and tailor support for students who need help meeting them. We must use accountability systems to improve learning, to identify successful schools and to support those that are struggling. Accountability should never be about punishing schools."
NEA believes the next version of ESEA must:
- Prepare all students to thrive in college, careers and life. That means a revised ESEA must address the needs of the whole student and provide the kinds of wraparound services that students need to be successful. The new law must ensure that students learn to think critically and solve problems, skills essential to living and working in the 21st century. It must support the use data to improve instruction and use multiple, valid sources of evidence of growth in student learning and school performance over time. It must encourage the use of research and promote innovation, and it must encourage schools to better engage parents, families and communities as partners in students' learning.
- Elevate the teaching profession. The new law must help districts recruit and retain excellent teachers and education support professionals. NEA believes there should be rigorous preparation for entry into the teaching profession along with comprehensive systems of induction, mentoring and professional development for educators.
- Make schools safe and equitable. The law should provide sustained and targeted support and research-based intervention strategies for struggling schools and provide funding for all schools that is adequate, equitable and sustained.
"Collaboration is the key to transforming schools," added Van Roekel. "We have so many examples of schools and districts where educators are working in partnership with all stakeholder groups, and the result is that student achievement is rising. NEA and the President are on the same page because we agree that every student deserves a great education and a great school. We look forward to working with Congress and the administration to realize this goal."
Follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/NEAMedia
# # #
The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing
3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.
CONTACT: Ramona Parks-Kirby (202) 822-7823, firstname.lastname@example.com


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The big shots over at the communications conglomerate, which owns hundreds of radio stations, including Power 105 Radio here in New York City, apparently felt that their corner offices on the 52nd floor, their $250-a-plate martini lunches every afternoon, and their summer Fridays spent skipping work in favor of a round or two at their super exclusive Westchester country club, had only served to put them out of touch with their listening public.
And as every executive worth their salt is taught in business school, the best way to appear like you care what the public thinks without actually having to care what the public thinks (which as we all know can seriously impact the bottom line) is to form a Local Advisory Board. That way, if anybody has a problem with your business practices, you can send the complaint to die with the Local Advisory Board, or if you want to implement some shady business practices, you can just twist some arms down at your corporate-friendly Local Advisory Board, thereby giving you plausible deniability when the public outrage ensues.
Clear Channel, however, had the ingenious idea of placing on their Local Advisory Board a council member who has been one of their most outspoken critics over the years: Councilman John Liu. It's devious, really; put Liu on the Local Advisory Board where he would be able to voice his complaints without holding pres conferences and public rallies.
And if Liu did go before the cameras to complain, the mucky-mucks over at Clear Channel could respond with a statement like, "We respect the councilman's opinion, which is why we have placed him on our Local Advisory Board, where we will address his concerns." Problem solved, or maybe not.
A little background. Clear Channel landed on Liu's Naughty List when they failed to accept responsibility for the actions of one of their DJ's, the alliteratively named Troi Torain, a.k.a. DJ Star. In 2006, Torain got into a well-rehearsed rap-style feud with a rival DJ, you know, pretending to be all hard and tough and upset to drum up some ratings.
However, Torain took it a little too far when he detailed his intent to rape, ejaculate on, and urinate on the daughter of his rival, which would have been bad enough if the girl were, say, 25 years old. However, the girl that Torain intended to do all of this to happened to be the tender young age of four.
But Torain really crossed the line when, on the air, he offered money to a listener who could provide him with the address of the girl's school.
The mother of the girl, obviously distraught and upset, approached Liu, who took on the personal crusade of calling for Torain's job, which the record-spinner eventually lost. Two days later, Torain was arrested by the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges in exchange for community service and a promise to stay out of trouble.
Torain then turned the tables on Liu - not the turntables, but rather the legal tables - by filing his own $55 million defamation lawsuit against the council member, which a federal judge threw out of court. Torain was apparently under the opinion that it was illegal to publicly criticize someone who threatens unthinkable acts against a four-year-old girl.
So that settles it, right? No. Liu wanted Clear Channel to donate $5.7 million, the amount paid to Torain while employed by Clear Channel, to a foundation that protects kids from sexual predators. They haven't cut that check, yet.
Liu declined Clear Channel's request to join their board with the phrase, "You have got to be kidding." (No, seriously, it's the second line of the letter.) He then signed the letter, "Incredulously, John C. Liu".
Doesn't sound like Liu was leaving the door open for a reconsideration of Clear Channel's offer.


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Viega sanitary and heating systems are renowned branded goods: brand quality with system warranty. Furthermore, agreements on assumption of liability were concluded with the ZVSHK and the BHKS for the branded products by Viega GmbH & Co. KG. Exception: brass threaded connectors and brass tap extensions. The selection of the raw materials in compliance with the high requirements in the products, state-of-the-art manufacture, use of operating materials and of packaging is based on the consideration of reasonable economic and ecological principals. For these reasons, architects, designers, specialist wholesalers and master craftsmen in the building services sector rely on Viega products. Viega products are sold via expert wholesalers. The quality management system of Viega GmbH & Co. KG is DIN EN ISO 9001 certified. The illustrations and data in this document are not binding. We reserve the right to modifications for product improvement. Material data relate to the parts in contact with water. Dimensions are in mm or inch. PU = pre-packaging units. The prices are valid for the German market. They are quoted in EURO per piece. Exceptions are marked. Depending on the context, the term Viega as used on the viega.de website either refers to the Viega group consisting of Viega GmbH & Co. KG and its direct or indirect subsidiaries, or to the brand Viega. The individual companies of the Viega group are legally separate, independent units and, as such, act autonomously. Accordingly, the term Viega is not necessarily to be understood as referring to a certain company of the Viega group.


text: Divekick is the world's first-ever two-button fighting game! It has earned notoriety in the press and fighting game community by not using a stick, yet still retaining the strategic gameplay and spacing techniques employed by professional fighting game players. Now anyone can experience the thrill of fighting games without memorizing complex combos and finger-contorting button presses.


text:
Joshua Brown is one angry former broker.
The 35-year-old financial advisor, whose Reformed Broker blog has brought him wide acclaim in recent years, has just written a book meant to uncover the perfidy of Wall Street. Backstage Wall Street is part plea, part mea culpa, part screed. Brown unmasks the financial industry for all to see, revealing the less-than-honest sales tactics of boiler-room brokers and dressing down investment banks for running away with fees and riches while Mom and Pop retail investors are left holding the bag.
Brown makes some startling claims: wirehouse brokerage firms will be gone in 10 years, as will the "suitability" standard governing broker-dealers. Mutual funds? They'll be gone too, replaced by their fast-rising cousins, ETFs. Brown takes his readers on the bumpy ride of Wall Street, from 2000 (when he started), through the credit crisis of 2007-2008, to the present day, when you can find him as a reinvented registered investment advisor, happily banking management fees instead of commissions.
But with the anger, there is also care. Brown, currently a vice president of investments at New York-based Fusion Analytics, truly wants to create a better financial industry, one where advisors can continue to make a living while always acting in their client's best interest.
What motivated you to write the book?
I'd say the primary reason is I had all this stuff in my head and weighing me down for a long time and it was just something that had to come up in some format. The second reason is, I think there's a story here that is more than just writing a series of blog posts, so I wanted to do something with this stuff. Blog posts are very disposable. People read them on Monday and then on Tuesday there's a whole new crop, so I felt that what I was trying to say with the book should have a little more of a shelf life.
In the beginning of the book, you write that you hope to reveal the "reality behind all the false glamour, contrived accuracy, and manufactured confidence" on Wall Street. Why?
People have said about my site, that the goal of [it] is how to make Wall Street better. So I think that has something to do with it. I hope that I'm part of a new wave of investment professionals that work to be truthful and only do things with the client's best interest at heart. So I hope that the book is part of that, an extension of that. Without sounding too high on the horse, that was something that just kind of evolved.
On this theme, in the beginning of the book, you describe your disappointment, even disgust, with the industry. At one point, you write "I'll starve on the street before I'll ever be a retail stockbroker again." What's so bad about being a retail stockbroker?
Everything. At its core, it's one giant conflict. The way we get paid, the way we're incentivized to do one thing over another, the fact that there are pay periods. In other words, there are considerations to what makes one person versus another person successful that are in diametric opposition to what is good for the client. I guarantee you if regulators want to do one very simple thing with a retail brokerage firm, the only thing they have to do is go into a firm and ask to see the commission books. Ask to see any Wednesday of the month versus the last day of the month. If they did that, I guarantee 12 months out of 12, for any given year, they would find an increased number of transactions and obviously an increased level of gross on that last day of the pay period versus any other Wednesday of the month. And what that tells you is that there are people making decisions that have more to do with brokers' compensation than what is best for the client. There are certain things that are endemic to being a retail broker that are in opposition to what is best for the client. So I'm not ever going to put myself in that position again where I have to rationalize and say things like "look, I really care about the client, but I'm $500 away from hitting a certain number and if I don't hit it I'm going to have a lower payout, so I better do this trade." I'm not going to do that ever again. I would prefer to sell oranges on the highway.
The readers of this magazine are retail stockbrokers, so I'm wondering, do you think they are all embroiled in conflict?
To greater and lesser extents, depending on what the firm does and what their niche [is]. I think there are very few firms left that are all the time full-service brokerage firms and nothing else. That's a rarity. I think what is more likely is that anywhere where your magazine gets delivered, somebody opens it up and reads it, that person works at a firm where some of the business they do is full-service brokerage and some of it is advisory.
What about those who are exclusively brokers?
They're not going to like what I have to say, but I think they're going to know that I'm telling the truth.
You talk a bit about the different standards applied to broker-dealers and RIAs and write that clients have no idea that those two kinds of financial advisors are governed by very different regulatory standards. Do you think this is something that Wall Street wants to obfuscate?
I think they benefit from the confusion, but I don't think there's a conspiracy. This is one of those things where it's lying by omission. There was a survey in 2010 where 93 percent of all investors didn't understand that their stockbroker didn't have a fiduciary duty to them. So what that means is that more than 9 out of 10 Americans think that any financial professional they work with has a fiduciary responsibility to them, when in reality, as a broker, the broker only has a suitability standard on a transaction on transaction basis.
You write a lot about the rough-edge stockbroker culture and the boiler room atmosphere and basically suggest that most brokers care more about the sale than the customer and basically don't know very much about what they're selling.
I'm speaking about a very specific kind of broker and that broker is dying, a relic of the '90s, that broker is dwindling down. When I'm talking about blue collar Wall Street brokers I'm basically talking about the guy who has built [his business] through advanced cold-calling skills. Basically, they lie for a living. Their pitch is that they somehow have the ability to outperform the market consistently, which of course is a lie, but they say it as though it's fact.
So you're not talking about the big wirehouse broker?
Not in this particular instance, no. I think the wirehouse is different. The wirehouse, there's been a tendency to just do as they say, so the wirehouse broker is not someone who wants to be ignorant or anything like that. The wirehouse broker says "I asked the client eight questions, I put the answers to those eight questions in a computer, the computer tells me what portfolio to recommend to the client." And that process is repeated almost like shoveling coal into a furnace.
The two investment products that you discuss most are mutual funds and ETFs. Regarding mutual funds you suggest that mutual fund companies and brokers work together closely, and not always to the benefit of the customer.
The reality is that [fund managers] mean-revert. Even a manager who outperforms for three years straight will probably under-perform long enough so that in the end it nets out just to be the same. So essentially mutual funds have found themselves to be the high-cost provider of something that most people don't need. In other words, there are $2 trillion in mutual funds right now. And a lot of that is in things like — and I'm just making up names — but let's say the Putnam Semiconductor Fund. And the reality is that if somebody just buys the semiconductor index as an ETF, it's very, very unlikely that the acting manager at Putnam is going to be able to beat that index over long stretches of time.
You write that 80 percent of mutual funds don't beat the market. Do you think the average investor realizes that?
No. Within the industry, we all know it. You can't not know it. However, there are a handful of funds that spectacularly outperform in a given year, or in a given two-year period or five-year period, and unfortunately for investors, just when these funds are coming off their best three or five years ever, that's exactly when they're going to get their five-star ranking from Morningstar and more importantly when their story is the easiest to tell. According to mean reversion we all know that that's actually the worst time that people could be throwing money at a top manager. I don't think there's a conspiracy, but most of them don't live up to what they're supposed to do. That's an extraordinary failure rate.
Near the end of the book you reveal details of the "Straight-Line" pitch and write that it's never been revealed before. What's so sacred about the pitch?
Wow. I think that everyone has their own version of the pitch, but slightly different. It's more like the Icelandic sagas that were told and told and told and then finally someone wrote them down. But in the meantime every tribe in every village had a slightly different version of it. That's what the Straight Line is for the brokerage industry. Every single person that reads this book that is a high-net-worth individual with a working phone line has heard some variation of it. They've heard it a million times in some cases. There are people that are going to buy this book and open it and say 'Oh my God, that's the exact thing this guy said to me yesterday! So it's got a lot of authors, it's kind of an oral tradition. I actually took a bunch of different versions and put together this version and I think it's the most accurate representation of the Straight Line that everyone has as a result of the cold-calling boom of the '90s.
The last chapter of the book is particularly damming. You write, "The Street's perpetuation of half-truths and outright myths about investment products and services has been near fatal to the average portfolio." You go on to say that the traditional broker model is "a business model that is broken beyond all repair." As I said, readers of this magazine are brokers. What's your message to them?
I think they probably agree with me. I think most [brokers] are looking for ways to become more fee-based. Because I don't think they are bad people. I was one of them less than two years ago. So I don't think it's a personality flaw. What I think is that some people [are] slower than others to wake up to the reality that there's a better way.
There's a better way to have integrity in your work and serve your clients?
It took me forever to figure that out, so I'm not even casting judgment on people who haven't figured that out yet. I could've been doing what I'm doing now let's say three or four years ago, so I stuck around doing that for longer. I'll give you the primary reasons why people do it. Number one, they're ignorant of the fact that they can do this differently. Now they're running out of excuses for being ignorant at this point, but fine. Number two, they don't care. There are people who just say, "Look, I want to sell people investments that give me 3% to 5%. That's how I make my money." That's their prerogative. I personally think they are doing their clients a disservice.
The third reason is: Think about how hard it is to transfer a commission-based business, in other words a transactional business, to fee-based business. To make money with a transactional business, you can have $2 million under management and make a quarter-million dollars per year as a broker. However, you need $25 million under management if you're going to make a quarter million as an advisor, minimum. Because keep in mind you are charging 1% on your assets. It's not easy, and that I think is another reason why a lot of the people that are going to read this haven't made the switch.
Given everything you've said, what do you see as the future of Wall Street? What is Wall Street going to look like in 10 years?
I think in 10 years the wirehouse disappears. I think eventually the SEC will adopt a fiduciary standard for brokers. It will be impossible for them to justify the commission model. I also think the mutual fund industry goes away. The independent advisories — some of them will get really big and they will look like the wirehouses of today, but that's going to be fee-based, people selling advice as opposed to commission-based people selling products.
I can imagine what this means for the broker, but can you spell it out?
For the person that's fully commission-based, I don't think they'll exist because when the regulators finally decide that there's a uniform fiduciary standard for anyone dealing with the public, they'll be forced to adapt. It sounds like I'm making a shocking prediction now, but what I'm saying is the only rational prediction. It would be shocking to predict that things will stay the way they are. That would be way more shocking.
So despite all the bad feelings, and everything I read, you are still in the industry, so you still must enjoy being a financial advisor.
The last chapter of the book is called "Breakaway" and I truthfully feel that after almost a decade and a half [in the industry] I finally found a format that gives the advisor the best chance of a successful career and gives the client the best chance of untainted, uncompromised service. So I spent a decade selling things to people and finally found a way to work with people and not be on the other side of the table. I think it's the Holy Grail in this industry and I'm really excited that I finally found it. And every day I wake up and I'm thankful that I'm doing this instead of what I used to do and what a lot of people are still doing. I have not given up on the advisor business at all. If anything I feel as though I found the right way to do it.


text:
What are
GIA Certified Diamonds and AGS Certified Diamonds? Loose diamonds
(not pre-set in a ring or other setting) that have been certified by
GIA (Gemological Institute of America) or AGS (American Gem
certificate is a "blueprint" of a diamond, it tells you the
diamond's exact measurements and weight, as well as the details of
its cut and quality. It precisely points out all the individual
characteristics of the stone. Certificates also serve as proof of
the diamond's identity and value.
A certificate is not the
same thing as an appraisal. A certificate describes the quality of a
diamond, but it does not place a monetary value on the gem. An
appraisal places a monetary value on your diamond, but does not
certify the quality of the diamond.
GIA Sample
Issues Certificates?
There are many
diamond labs that issue certificates, but the Gemological Institute
of America (GIA) and the American Gem Society (AGS) are the two most
widely regarded and recognized diamond grading labs in the
And while there are many
other diamond grading labs in operation (many of which produce their
own grading reports), dfferent labs have different grading
standards, and some labs will be more lenient with their standards
than others. Therefore, we recommend buying from a diamond jewelry
store that offers GIA or AGS certified diamonds, as these labs have
consistently demonstrated their commitment to high standards. If you
do elect to buy non GIA- or AGS- certified diamonds, always ask for
credentials of the certifying lab.
Do I Need a Certificate?
Shopping for
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more about the Four Cs of
Brilliant Jewelry, INC 23014 Sandalfoot Plaza Dr Boca Raton, FL 33428
© 2007-2012 by Brilliant Jewelry. All Rights Reserved.


text:
Topic: Mystik (RPG)
Ok, you should know the rules by now...i hope, for you new members, the rules are listed on most front pages of an RPG
Classes:Mage, Necromancer, Warrior, Knight, Barbarian, Spellsword,Assasin, Theif, Warrior of Shadow, Healer, Archer (you can make a sort of custom class just supply a name and abbilties)
Races:Human(most ballanced) ,Elf/Dark Elf(best at magic.),Orc(strong),Orkulathan (lizard-man, breaths under water, stealthy) Tai'kor (think taung/yatuja, most athletic, realy tall)
Character 'sheet'
Age:(elves, orkulathan and Tai'kor are very long lived)
Side:(this comes later)
WOC:(if you have twin blades they can go under one space)
Spells:(five for warrior/archer classes, one extra for healers, six for mage/necromancer)
Back story,(Think LOTR/Elder Scrolls)
You are a traveller, born in a village or city you grew to adulthood, and your own skill emerged. You left your birth place, seeking greatness, wealth, power, or somthing else. You entered the land of Arkethonech to find a kindom under seige. You must make a choice, join the invaders, known as the Chat'orh'auk or the defenders, the C'ta'nez'ech. you then will speak to a man. a warlord, or a king, and he will tell you of an artifact, that you must retrive for him. The journy is long and perilous but the rewards are great.
(so, for your 1st post, you will be coming from where ever, and you will see the city, and choose a side, so then the leader of the side gives you the mission.)
Name: Kal'ok'eth
Gender:M for Male
Age:73(kinda young for the species)
Class:Warrior of Shadow
WOC:Twin short swords,
WOC2: Knife
WOC3:Serpents Fang (magic knife)
Spells: Fireball, lightning, cloak, paralize, Charm
[url=http://lfgcomic.com/page/1]Interrogations are hard...[/url]


text:
The stomach connects the esophagus to the small intestine, and functions to break up food into small particles that can be absorbed by the small intestine.
In cases of chronic stomach problems (such as ulcers), or obesity or cancer, partial or total removal of the stomach may be indicated.
An incision is made in the skin over the pyloric region of the stomach.
The diseased portion of the stomach is removed. The small intestine is attached to the remainder of the stomach to maintain the integrity of the digestive tract.
The patient will be on nasogastric tube suction to keep the stomach empty and at rest after surgery. After several days, and when the stomach starts to function normally again, the tube will be removed and the patient will begin ingesting clear liquids and gradually progress to a full and normal diet.


text:
Gary A. Kenney to Donald L. Kenney, 916 Anderson Street, gift.
David A. and Amy R. Spence to Thomas Brannock, Trustee, lot on Wine Cellar Circle, $67,500.
Joseph F. Mallory to Laura L. Settle, 315 6-l/2 Street SW, $18,500.
Friends LLC to William C. and Susan Cough and Virginia Parker-Bell and Richard P. Bell IV, 1408 Baker Street, gift.
Earl A. and Bernice E. Beach to Linda B. Winkler, 1757 Franklin Drive, $32,500.
Myrtle Hamlet, Trustee, to Laurance and Andrea K. Wieder, 2331 Highland Avenue, $130,000.
J. Michael Barry to Lane L. Bonner III, 337 15th Street NW, $172,500.
JaZan LLC to Paolo D'Odorico, unit in Turtle Creek Condominiums, $99,500.
Southland Homes Inc. to William L. Wolfe II, 2.022 acres at 2300 Hartland Court, Bentivar, $479,950.
Carol J. Glieit to Joanne Scott, 281 Tennis Drive, Four Seasons, $176,900.
VanDerLinde Housing Inc. to Thomas A. and Christine A. Eagleson, 3142 Turnberry Circle, Springridge, Forest Lakes, $399,950.
Edwin L. Childs to Jonathan Gregory and Leann H. Brinton, 27 Mill Creek Drive, $168,000.
Robert Hauser Homes Inc. to Richard C. and Joan M. Schilling, 1172 Rustic Willow Lane, Forest Lakes South, $226,950.
Brian T. and Lauren P. Moriarty to Kevin B. and Krista R. Schmitt, 1060 Hunters Ridge Road, Earlysville Forest, $154,900.
Arthur Carter Jr. et al., to Barton J. Hansen, Trustee, .097 acres at 2529 Castle Rock Road, Afton, $600.
Thomas A. and Christine A. Eagleson to Kumar P. and Ayanthi Dharmasena, 827 Harris Road, Willoughby, $172,500.
Robert A. Sonday and Sarah A. McCallum to Lisa H. Simonds, 4831 Buck Mountain Road, Free Union, $95,000.
John A. and Diana P. Seaman to Robert L. and Amy C. Cumbia, 2400 Shady Spring Drive, Harmony subdivision, $495,000.
Weather Hill Homes Ltd. to Michael W. and Carol E. Henderson, parcel in Blue Hills subdivision, $116,500.
Gordon A. and Audrey Webster, Trustees, to Jeff C. Goldsmith and Laurel L. Olson, 414-A Key West Drive, $470,000.
Southland Homes Inc. to Joseph T. and Lindsay T. Milby, 1066 SomerChase Court, Hollymead, $162,000.
Southland Homes Inc. to Marta Ramsey, 1050 SomerChase Court, Hollymead, $141,000.
Hurt Investment Company to James B. Spence III, Trustee, parcel in Westview, $75,000.
James A. Price Jr. to Paul V. Desanker, 3653 Morgantown Road, $252,500.
Obed Higgins IV to Joseph and Lisa M. Opastore, 1909 Becker Lane, Forest Lakes South, $241,000.
Peter S. Baker to George A. and Mary E. Hammond, 25.345 acres on State Route 761, 1558 Briery Creek Road, Scottsville, $173,450.
Mildred G. Collins to Lance O. Strain, 20 acres on the east side of Sprouse's Branch, gift.
Ty P. and Sheree L. Daul to Mary G. Bryant, parcel in Cory Farm, $332,500.
Charlottesville Housing Foundation to Crozet Crossing Community Association, 4.178 acres, $4,200.
Redfields Development Corporation to Craig Enterprises Inc., two parcels in Redfields, $91,000.
Jin Tang Dong and Li-Ping Hu to Lawrence A. and Susan M. Clarke, 1388 Reas Ford Road, Clearview, $247,000.
Robert Hauser Homes Inc. to Gary L. and Karen Y. Trader, 332 Pleasant Place, Forest Lakes South, $329,500.
JaZan LLC to John L. Gibson Jr., unit in Turtle Creek Condominiums, $72,750.
Zeki B. and Ruth W. Sisman to Hongtao M. Guo and Xiaoying Nan, 2071 Winterfield Circle, Forest Lakes, $184,500.
James H. Arnold III to James C. Arnold, 9.3205 acres at 7300 Batesville Road, gift.
Lesco Inc. to Albeville Station JV LLC, parcel on State Route 743, $800,000.
Mark R. Wick to Jane M. Wick, 2666 Coralberry Place, Forest Lakes South, pursuant to separation agreement.
Glenmore Associates Limited Partnership to Robert Hauser Homes Inc., .572 acre parcel in Glenmore, $155,000.
Forest Lakes Associates to VanDerLinde Housing Inc., parcel in Forest Lakes, $73,000.
Reva A. and Harry C. Powell Sr. to Michael Gallahue and Marcia Invernizzi, 138.142 acres on State Route 633, Heard's Mountain Road, Covesville, $250,000.
Vanessa M. Shami to John L. Handloser, 284 Autumn Grove Court, Mill Creek, $166,900.
R.D. Wade Builder Inc. to Jae K. Lee and Seungwon Jeon, 3190 Turnberry Circle, Forest Lakes, $321,625.
James B. Spence III, Trustee, to John P. and Mildred K. Bartley, 4979 Lake Tree Lane, Crozet, $230,000.
Wade Apartments LLC to Lesco Inc., 106 Whitewood Road, units in Sachem Village condominiums, $425,000.
Bryan C. and Shannon D. Baxter to Justine E. Owens, 5920 Weston Lane, Crozet, $196,500.
William S. and Debra J. Busker to Dennis J. and Jacqueline M. Harris, two acres at 6173 Blackwells Hollow Road, Crozet, $250,000.
David A. and Laurinda E. Looney to Robert J. and Michelle D. Mete, 1390 Earlysville Forest Drive, $264,900.
Daniel Zisk and Hairuo Yi to American Escrow and Closing Company, 1131 Raintree Drive, $235,500.
American Escrow and Closing Company to Stephen and Ursula Goadhouse, 1131 Raintree Drive, $235,500.
G. David Baer to Shane R. and C. Anna Gainey, two acres at 1662 Pugh's Store Road, Afton, $129,000.
Joshua A. and Jane B. Goldschmidt to Church Hill Development Company LLC , 9.973 acres in Queen Charlotte subdivision on State Route 747, gift.
Craig Enterprises Inc. to Betty L. and Sheldon Cohen, 1345 Stonegate Court, Western Ridge, Crozet, $255,008.
Gwendolyn J. and Clifford T. Bennett to Alex Nice, 38 Spring Court, Four Seasons condominiums, $62,500.
Branko and Gail Kraljevic to Lawrence A. and Margot T. Young, unit in Turtle Creek condominiums, $114,000.
Wendall W. Gibson Inc. to Philip M. and Jennifer J. Kirby, 434 Cranberry Lane, Parkside Village, $325,578.45.
Soggy Bottom Inc. to Jennifer R. and Gregory E. Larson-Sawin, 1220 Chatham Ridge, RiverRun, $129,400.
Genevieve Nibbs to Mark B. Shipp, 154 Scarborough Place, Sherwood Manor, $115,000.
Craig Enterprises Inc. to Judith W. Warren, 554 Pebble Hill Court, Redfields, $181,199.
Richard L. and Diana S. Beyer to Gary R. and Sara S. Ray, 2001 North Pantops Drive, Ashcroft, $500,000.
Gary R. and Sara S. Ray to Mark M. and Lynn S. Reed, 3050 Amberfield Trail, Forest Lakes, $244,000.
JaZan LLC to Walter C. Mitchell, Trustee, unit in Turtle Creek condominiums, $72,500.
W. Nathaniel D. and Erica K. Perkins to Alexander P. and Karen L. LoRusso, 4850 Highlands Place, $284,900.
Robert D. and Lupe C. Lauer to Samuel James and Esther B. Grace, 2964 Cove Trace, Forest Lakes, $361,400.
Ian and Judith C. Robertson to Martin M. and Ellen N. Podolski, 2931 Brookmere Road, Woodbrook, $234,500.
Ray D. and Devan S. Vaughn to Robin Mnontagna, 3405 Piperfife Court, Glenmore, $410,000.
Lewis A. Martin Jr. and Lewis A. Martin III, Trustees, to Wayne A. and Deborah S. Hall, .330 acres at 1868 Woodburn Road, $102,000.
GTF Homes LLC to Jeffrey S. Davis, 6091 Free Union Road, $295,000.
James D. and Rozell W. White Jr. to Ian and Judith C. Robertson, 102-B Overlook Drive, $295,000.
Frances P. Charlie to Donald Weyland Mitchell, 1624 Townwood Court, $109,000.
Richard M. and Amy Charron to Shusen Li and Xuli Wu, 117 Scarborough Place, Sherwood Manor, $109,900.
Thomas J. and Michelle D. Cogan to Glenda J. and William L. Taylor, 5275 Sugar Hollow Road, Crozet, $275,000.
Brock S. and Susannah R. Genossar to Patrick C. and Jacqueline H. Asplin, 658 Bradford Street, $299,000.
George S.C. McCray to Robert A. MacDonell, parcel in Huntwood, $115,000.
Sandra K. Stephens and Susan K. Breeden to Gary P. and Vicki G. Bibb, 2.10 acres near U.S. 29, $120,000.
Weather Hill Homes Ltd. to David A. and Lynn A. Boberski, parcel in Blue Hill subdivision, $185,000.
Stephen A. Phillips and Helen W. Ayers to Brock S. and Susannah R. Genossar, 21 acres at 280 Wilhoit Mill Road, Dyke, $315,000.
Brent W. and Cresent W. Railey to Bruce R. and Katherine G. Lindsey, 416 Wynridge Drive, $162,500.
Glenmore Associates Limited Partnership to Francine M. Leech, 2410 Pendower Lane, Glenmore, $135,000.
Kevin G. and Jan Alison Sendker to Brenda Thompson and G. Elaine Canhele, 109 Landin Circle, Willoughby, $162,900.
Blue Ridge Homecrafters Inc. to Miles M. and Mary M. Frank, 5.29 acres at 3656 Taylors Gate Road, $552,559.
Ronald W. and Wendy Mayer-Aschhoff to Roland C. and Shelley V. Smith, 9.19 acres in Advance Mills Village, $346,000.
Kent W. Peterson to Virginia Mae Sonne, 145.57 acres at 7757 Faber Road, Faber, pursuant to divorce decree.
Daniel F. and Elizabeth A. Corizzo to Robert J. Walters and Janet A. Muse, 3222 Poplar Ridge Road, $258,900.
Deal of the Week:
Lesco Inc. to Albeville Station JV LLC, parcel on State Route 743, $800,000.


text:
Changing the camera's sound in N900 is quite easy. All system sounds are stored in usr/share/sound. Just follow the following simple steps to do so:
- Root your N900 if you have not already. Just download rootsh from application manager.
- Connect to N900 using any FTP client (like Filezilla or WinSCP) over WiFi.
- Go to usr/share/sound
- Replace camera_snd_title_1 by any new sound file (the format doesn't matter). It's the camera's shutter sound
- Replace camera_snd_title_2. It's the video recording sound
- Replace camera_snd_title_3. It's the camera's focus sound
- Disconnect and restart your phone
That's it. This will change your phone's camera sounds to the new sound files. If you want a silent camera, just rename or delete the files instead of adding new ones.


text:
I imagine this is lousy news for most of our readers: UCLA researchers found that breathing auto emissions can trigger a change in "good" cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein, HDL) to the "bad" kind, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and the result of this is more clogged arteries and heart problems and all sorts of other unpleasantness. Crap.
The study finds that particles in the exhaust activates other components of oxidation, which leads to cell and tissue damage that causes the hardening of arteries and other types of tissue inflammation. Normally, "good" cholesterol, aside from picking you up from the airport, lending you money, and helping you move, also normally protects against these oxidation effects. Sadly, the chemicals and particles in exhaust actually alters the cholesterol so it contributes to the oxidation process.
To be fair, the study was done on mice, and in the following circumstances:
Mice were exposed for a few hours, several days a week, to whole diesel exhaust at a particulate mass concentration within the range of what mine workers usually are exposed to.
"Whole diesel exhaust?" Concentration like what mine workers are exposed to? That seems a good bit more than what most people would normally encounter, even for us gearheads with old, exhaust-leaky cars.
While this is by no means good news for anyone's health, feel free to follow my long-term health plan to deal with this: I'm going to cut all calcium out of my diet and keep breathing exhaust, so that as my arteries harden, my bones will hollow out, and I'm pretty sure my body will just switch roles between my circulatory and skeletal systems. See, I'll keep my body supported with my hardened network of arteries, and flow my blood through the network of now-hollow bones. It's foolproof!
(Source: Science Daily)