TSA has a new requirement: travelers must buy airline tickets in the exact same name that appears on their government-issued IDs that they will show at security checkpoints. It’s the Secure Flight passenger identification program, and it’s supposed to lead to fewer misidentifications of flyers as those on terrorist watch lists. In the meantime, it’s guaranteed to lead to more frustrated people who will be delayed at the checkpoint because they forgot to include their middle name when buying the ticket.
Exactly half of them are from 2008 and ‘09. The share would have been even larger but some companies can’t be allowed to fail, as we know. Because the sky would fall, apparently.
A man from Knoxville, TN, with a 14-page criminal record and minimum-wage job has 21 kids with 11 different women. No, he’s not a Mormon. Meet Desmond Hatchett:
What Obama’s new “cyberspace strategy” could mean for anonymity on the Internet. Is another of those public-private partnerships coming, managed by one of those people that are now running much of America – czars?
Congress has passed legislation to stop some questionable credit card practices used by issuing banks. But being Congress, it gave issuers plenty of time to squeeze you extra hard before the laws take effect. And that’s what the banks are already doing – and will keep doing for nine more months. Bottom line:
“There’s probably never been a worse time to have credit card debt.”
Think you’re safe because you don’t carry balances? How about paying interest starting from the day a purchase was made, because your bank decided to scrap grace periods?
There is advice on what you can do on the last page of the article.
The Obama administration’s gift to American families - a marriage tax:
Obama’s proposed tax increases create a massive financial penalty for married couples, by subjecting them to much higher income taxes than if they had chosen to live together without getting married. (Unmarried people voted decisively for Obama. But as the Associated Press notes, “married people tend to favor” Republicans like McCain).
Under the tax increases contained in Obama’s recent budget proposals, a married couple making $232,000 a year would be in a higher tax bracket than many unmarried couples making $370,000 a year. Simply by getting married, a man and woman making $170,000 each would be pushed up from their current level of 28 percent to 36 percent. But an unmarried couple making $340,000 a year ($170,000 each) would be taxed at 28 percent. And a married couple making $380,000 would be taxed at 39.6 percent — not counting certain adjustments that bring the rate to 40.7 percent. (That’s just the federal standard rate. You have to add to that state income taxes (up to 10.3 percent), and federal self-employment taxes, which many small business owners pay — which could result in marginal rates of well over 60 percent).
Obama’s proposals impose tax increases on any single person making over $190,650. Worse, they increase taxes on all married couples making over $231,300 — even if each spouse only makes half of that, or $115,650, far less than the $190,650 that drives up the rate for singles.
If married folks vote Republican, then it’s entirely logical that Obama wants fewer of them by 2012.
Salivating over Sonia Sotomayor becoming the first Hispanic justice if she is confirmed is a big part of the amusing love-fest the media are having with her. What they conveniently forget is that the first Hispanic justice was Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover in 1932. But Hoover was from the wrong party, and Cardozo’s skin was too white, so he doesn’t count, I guess.
A boy photographed a praying mantis catching a hummingbird, killing it by impaling it through the chest with his foreleg, and eating the flesh from its abdomen – all while hanging upside down from a plant.
The mantis has captured the hummingbird and is about to kill it.
And here is a video of a praying mantis eating a hummingbird while mating:
Studying nature is, in large part, studying the innumerable ways in which living creatures catch, kill and eat one another.
The trial is not about semantics like whether Scientology is a church or something else (it’s already considered a sect in France) but about seeing whether crimes have been committed and whether the organization should be disbanded in this country:
The Church of Scientology could be dissolved in France if it is convicted in a trial that opened Monday in a Paris court, where the group and seven of its French leaders stand charged of organized fraud and illegal pharmaceutical activity.
Investigating judge Jean-Christophe Hullin spent years examining the group’s activities, and in his indictment criticized practices he said were aimed at extracting large sums of money from members and plunging them into a “state of subjection.”
The whole and sole purpose of Scientology is to make its leaders rich. I don’t know of any other religion like that.
President Obama's signature on a bill, and a pen used for the signing, aboard Air Force One on a flight from Buckley Air Force Base, Denver Colorado to Phoenix, Arizona 2/17/09.
James Harrison plans to pass on another trip to the White House with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Harrison, the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, says he’ll skip the Super Bowl champion’s visit to the White House to meet President Barack Obama on Thursday, just as he did when the Steelers were honored by President George W. Bush in June 2006.
“I don’t feel the need to go, actually,” Harrison told Pittsburgh station WTAE-TV. “I don’t feel like it’s that big a deal to me.”
Some people want whole-body-imaging scanners banned because they believe TSA officers could use them to make “naked virtual images of celebrities” and “make a fortune” off them. The ACLU is on the case, so it must be a worthy cause.
The findings, obtained in an annual survey on values and beliefs conducted May 7-10, marked a significant shift from a year ago. A year ago, 50 percent said they were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life — in the new poll, 42 percent said they were pro-choice.
The new survey showed that Americans remained deeply divided on the legality of abortion — with 23 percent saying it should be illegal in all circumstances, 22 percent saying it should be legal under any circumstances, and 53 percent saying it should be legal only under certain circumstances.
The findings echoed a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center, which reported a sharp decline since last August in those saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases — from 54 percent to 46 percent.
“Ironically, Obama’s radical abortion policies and nominees may have helped make America more pro-life,” said Wendy Wright, president of the conservative advocacy group Concerned Women for America.
The poll itself can be seen here. Interesting analysis from Ed Kilgore.
Norway’s oil wealth is keeping it afloat while the world is struggling. So what economic lesson does the New York Times see here? No, it’s not “Drill, drill, drill!” – it’s “Free markets don’t work! Socialism! Socialism!”.
A letter by a hedge fund manager who is not afraid of a powerful president – a president who wants to take hedge fund clients’ money so he can give it to a union whose donations and votes he’ll need again in 2012.
New York, which until eight months ago was the financial capital of the world, is no longer even the financial capital of the United States. Washington is.
They are from the government and they are here to help. Just don’t expect them to leave when they’re done helping.
Abu Dhabi Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the half-brother of the United Arab Emirates’ benevolent ruler, who was videotaped torturing a man in 2004, has, according to the UAE government, been detained and put under house arrest pending an investigation. If the man gets off again, it will not be for lack of evidence - it’s all there on the tape:
