While snow in September is not unusual at higher elevations and in Glacier National Park, many lower elevations also received a dusting, with some areas reporting several inches of snow by mid-day on Friday.
The photo, however was taken in Babb, Montana - elevation 4,560.
At that elevation, snow this early in September is indeed a surprise.
Link
California sea lion Doro nuzzles her two-month-old baby Gina at the Berlin Zoo
"The very early mild cognitive changes once thought to be normal aging are really the first signs of progressive dementia, in particular Alzheimer's disease." said Robert S.Wilson, PhD, neuropsychologist at Rush University Medical Center. "The pathology in the brain related to Alzheimer's and other dementias has a much greater impact on memory function in old age than we previously recognized."
This means I'm in trouble because I've had mild memory loss for several years.
I have often told Valeta that I believe in the hereafter. I walk into the next room and then wonder what I am here after.
Link to the memory loss report here.
But the cost is probably much higher since the six government agencies that spent stimulus dollars relied largely on sampling to get an estimate of how much money was spent on posting signs near Recovery Act projects.
Most of the signs read, “Putting America to Work,” and they include the ARRA emblem along with the Recovery.gov Web address.
While the Obama administration contends the signs provide transparency, Republicans believe the signs amount to taxpayer-subsidized propaganda.
Either way it was $9,000,000.00 that could have been spent in a more meaningful way.
More here.
An intoxicated pilot was arrested at Amsterdam's Schipol airport just minutes before his airliner carrying 196 passengers was due to take-off.
Link1) If the model in the photo, found at the link below, had a lot of hair on his chest, would the shirt be as easy to remove the first time?
2) Would a skin-tight shirt stretch if the owner gained a few pounds?
Go back to 2006, and even before that, and Democrats used health care as their No. 1 issue,” Tracey said. “They had a villain in the pharmaceutical industry. Now that they passed this law, it’s almost disarmed them rather than given them an opportunity.”
Moreover, Tracey’s data shows that health reform opponents – inside and outside of Congress – are increasingly outspending supporters.
Opponents now spend seven times as much on anti-reform spots as supporters spend on pro-reform spots, a marked change from early May, when their dollars only doubled those of reform advocates.
"Over the past couple of days something has developed that has me more than a little concerned.
Our specialty coffee machine (which makes the hot mochas, lattes and cappuccinos) has been working on and off for they past couple of weeks and started to smell of something I can only describe as ungodly."
It was determined that the coffee maker’s sporadic performance was due to the fact that maggots were growing in the mechanism of the coffee maker.
The machine was shut down right away and cleaned but maggots continued to grow inside the coffee machine.
More here.
Children dressed in traditional Bavarian clothes prepare for the Allgaeuer Viehscheid cattle drive in southern Germany.
Many are saying that passengers flying with low cost carriers such as Ryanair are already too cramped.
Researchers have revealed a direct relationship between two specific antibodies and the severity of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, raising hopes that a diagnostic blood test for the devastating disorder is within reach.
More here.
Now all but ignoring Bush, Obama is criticizing a Republican most voters have never heard of: House Minority Leader John Boehner (pictured).
The change from bashing bush to demonizing Boehner is a gamble for Democrats. It is also an acknowledgment that bashing Bush has lost its credibility.
The risk for Obama and fellow Democrats is that millions of Americans will scratch their heads when they hear Boehner's name (pronounced BAY'-nur). Democratic strategists, however, say the White House has few choices.
Former Boehner spokesman Kevin Madden said Obama and his allies "are trying to create and poison a public profile in 50 days."
Madden predicts the effort will fail. Voters care much less about personalities than jobs, taxes and spending, he said, and many will see Obama's criticisms of Boehner as unseemly.
Ed Gillespie, who was a Bush White House adviser, agreed. "Obama is making himself smaller and Boehner bigger," he said.
The shift in focus from Bush to Boehner has been dramatic.
In a speech last week in Ohio, Obama cited Boehner eight times by name, and twice as "the Republican House leader." He did not directly mention Bush or Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate GOP leader.
Obama portrayed Boehner, 60, as the embodiment of unwise Republican ideas, past and future.
Trying to shift blame from Bush to Boehner certainly seems to be a desperate gamble.
Link
The program induced the purchase of an additional 360,000 cars in July and August of 2009. However, almost all of the additional purchases under the program were pulled forward from the very near future; the effect of the program on auto purchases is almost completely reversed by as early as March 2010 – only seven months after the program ended.
The effect of the program on auto purchases was significantly more short-lived than previously suggested. We also find no evidence of an effect on employment, house prices, or household default rates in cities with higher exposure to the program.
The overwhelming vote was 335 to 1.The bill would make it illegal to wear garments such as the niqab or burka, which incorporate a full-face veil, anywhere in public.
It envisages fines of 150 euros ($193) for women who break the law and 30,000 euros and a one-year jail term for men who force their wives to wear the burka.
Not mentioned in the arguments for and against the bill is the potential for criminals to cover their faces with the full-face niqab or burka allowing them to roam freely undetected.
More here.
Congress returns this week with embattled Democrats torn between trying to show they have the economic answers and fearing the further wrath of voters over new government programs.
It appears the fears will win out.
As Democrat lawmakers disembark from their private jets, they are likely glad to be back in Washington, where they do not have to talk to real Americans back home who are concerned about their mega-spending.
More here.
The Summit, coordinated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and the leftist advocacy group Center for American Progress, featured surprise appearances by SUVs, environmental protesters, praise for hydropower, and a dreary, steady rain as speaker after speaker sang the praises of solar power.
The irony was as thick as the moisture in the air as they preached to the choir about solar power in the dessert during a steady rain.
The article at the link below reports that approximately 50 environmental activists gathered in protest wearing t-shirts and carrying posters castigating coal and praising solar power. It's just that somebody forgot to tell the protesters that the Summit speakers actually agreed with them.
Somebody also forgot to tell Mother Nature not to send a steady, gloomy rain to interrupt a solar power cheerleading session in the Mojave Desert.
Reid and a few aides rode in a caravan of gas-guzzling SUVs. Even the 100 yards from Summit headquarter in the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Thomas & Mack Center to the site of a protest and then back the same 100 yards. Had to fog the air with the SUV caravan.
Speaker after speaker – including T. Boone Pickens, Center for American Progress CEO John Podesta, and Pacific Gas & Electric CEO Peter Darbee – spoke in broad terms and meaningless platitudes about the promise of renewable power.
Nobody presented economic cost comparisons, nobody mentioned the billions of taxpayer dollars already being handed over to the renewable power industry every year, and nobody pointed out that T. Boone Pickens, PG&E, and the Center for American Progress all are in bed with the renewable power industry and have glaring conflicts of interest regarding renewable power issues.
The lower portion of Big John is shown above, More photos of can be found at the second link below.
A federal judge says he likely will let go to trial portions of a lawsuit by Florida and 19 other states challenging the president's health care overhaul as unconstitutional.
But U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said at a Tuesday hearing in Pensacola that he expects to dismiss other parts.
The states and the administration disagree over sections of the law that will require people to have health insurance or face tax penalties. They also disagree over whether states should pay additional Medicaid costs not covered by the federal government.
Facing tax penalties and even fines for not having health care insurance is probably causing the most concern. The average American can understand penalties and fines.
The worst of ObamaCare won't be known by most Americans until 2012 or later.
Link to the 20-state lawsuit here.
A performer takes part in the Notting Hill Carnival, a London tradition.
Save the Whales
Free Tibet
NoBama
Send Dubya back to Crawford
Re-elect Al Gore
I was anti-Obama before it was cool
Vote for Monica Lewinsky's boyfreind's wife
Øbama
Keep the Change
Personally, I don't do bumper stickers. However, if I could find one that says, "Help stamp our Bumper Stickers" I'd buy it on the spot.
Driehaus and Nye, both Democrats, are in two of the most hotly contested House races in the country.
This dynamic illustrates the clear enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, with public polls and anecdotal evidence showing the GOP is fired up for the midterm election and Democratic voters are not.
More here.
A decorated cow makes its way back to a farm in Au near Lofer, in the Austrian province of Salzburg.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (pictured), the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up an international flight near Detroit last Christmas has told a federal judge he wants to represent himself in court.He's in custody awaiting trial on charges that include attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. Nearly 300 people were aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Authorities say he was trying to set off explosives hidden in his underwear.
The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase — from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent — would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.
Republicans, on a drive to gain control of the House and possibly the Senate, will use this as one more argument to make against Democrats going into the November elections.
The GOP says voters should fire Democrats because Obama's economic fixes are hindering the sluggish economic recovery.
Right or wrong, Republicans could cite a higher poverty rate as evidence.
Continuing to blame Bush will probably not convince voters in November.
Link
Nearly two years ago, the political world could only marvel at the breadth of voter support for Barack Obama.
He energized a coalition -- made up of blacks, women, Latinos, young voters and large numbers of suburbanites -- that some believed would keep Democrats in power for years to come.A scant 20 months later, the Obama coalition is frayed and frazzled.
Surprisingly, support for the president among Latinos, young people and women has dropped as much as it has among groups that were considered less likely to stick with the president, such as white males, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
Support among suburbanites has dropped dramatically too, surveys show, while African American voters remain Obama's most loyal constituency and his fiercest defenders.
The Pew Research Center survey experts routinely ask respondents to characterize the president in a single word.
In their most recent poll, conducted this summer, more respondents than ever answered with the word "disappointing."
…hat tip to Wes Peterson
A white tiger cub is pictured during a medical examination at the Serengeti Safari Park in the northern German village of Hodenhagen, August 3, 2010.
A picture of my cave
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