The justices let stand a lower court’s rejection of the group’s challenge to the National Football League team’s federal trademarks on its name.The case had more symbolic importance than practical. A victory by the Indians in their challenge wouldn’t have forced the Redskins to change the nickname, though the team could have lost its exclusive rights.
Federal law bars trademarks that “may disparage” people. The issue in the appeal turned on a legal doctrine known as laches, which in some contexts bars lawsuits by people who weren’t vigilant in asserting their rights.
The Indians contend that laches doesn’t apply to efforts to cancel a federal trademark. A federal appeals court in Washington disagreed and threw out the lawsuit.
Other professional sports teams with Native American names
and imagery include the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves baseball teams and the Kansas City Chiefs football team. College sports teams include the Florida State Seminoles and the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux.
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The American Farm Bureau says that because prices have come down on certain foods, including turkey and milk, Thanksgiving dinner should be 4% cheaper than last year.
In 2009, the average cost for a Thanksgiving dinner that feeds ten is $42.91, or about $4.29 a person. Last year, the average meal for ten was $44.61, $1.70 more expensive.
Detail for the most recent poll is here.
The $300 million Medicaid fix that Sen. Mary Landrieu got inserted into the Senate healthcare bill wasn’t the first “Louisiana Purchase” of the healthcare debate.
Before Rep. Joseph Cao (La.) cast the lone Republican vote for the healthcare bill in the House, he secured assurances from President Barack Obama to work on Medicaid funding, loan forgiveness and issues related to two of his local hospitals.
The best-known deal involved Reps. Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa, two Blue Dog Democrats from the Golden State who secured funding for a medical school for California’s Central Valley.
The report mentions other last-second trade-offs and promises. Wavering legislators, fearful that a vote could cost them back home, hold out until leadership promises them a little sweetener.
But aren’t these “side deals” really bribes? Of course they are but probably none bigger than the Mary Landrieu $300 million deal.
Polls show only 38% of Americans favor ObamaCare but many politicians don’t care. Bribery must turn the ears of politicians deaf.
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Bill Moyers, former White House Press Secretary for Lyndon Johnson, has become well known for his many one-sided political stories that appeared on his program on Public Television.
The Democrats' polling must be showing something similar. Otherwise, House members wouldn't have competed for permission to vote against it, Senators wouldn't have demanded nine-figure payoffs to vote for it, and Harry Reid wouldn't have held the vote on a Saturday night (as Nancy Pelosi did with the House vote).
The recent suggestions of more limited mammograms and pap smears will further reduce the number of voters in favor of ObamaCare and further push Senate Democrat leaders to cram this bill through by any means possible.
Reducing the number of these critical tests will save money and will be a major step to health care rationing.
Poll data is here.
For nearly 20 years, from Al Gore to President Obama, they have been intoning to us that 'the science is settled'. But as ever more scientists from outside the IPCC's self- selected 'magic circle' now maintain, it has never been more obvious that this simply isn't true.
No one has put this better than Professor Lindzen, one of the world's leading climatologists, when he wrote: 'Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st-century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections contemplated a roll-back of the industrial age.'
The climate controversy was never about stopping nature. It was about taxing and control.
Many scientists in the U.S. have been going along with the climate change theory in order to keep their grant money flowing. By going against the ‘warmists’ their grand money would suddenly dry up.
Ask a global warming believer why Al Gore will not debate the so-called ‘warming science’ in his books and movie. Gore won’t. He can’t.
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As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.
According to the government's broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.
So much for the stimulus creating jobs.
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The eBay Announcement Board had this message:Due to errors in some of our backend systems, members may be seeing different errors in Search. This could be that "We were unable to run the search results you entered. Please try again in a few minutes" or a blank page, or simply the browser being unable to display the page. Please note that we are working as quickly as possible to get this resolved. Thank you for your patience as we continue to work to resolve this.
The auction giant said it would compensate sellers for their losses. In the past eBay has compensated sellers by extending their auction listings at no additional cost - there is never a cash compensation to sellers as a result of a glitch on eBay.
By the way, in case you wondered why you or your friends are having a more difficult time getting bids on your eBay auctions, it may be because eBay has 200,000,000 live listings which is 33 percent more than at this time one year ago.
Also, over the past year, eBay has rolled out a special ‘on-ramp’ for large retailers, manufacturers and liquidators called Large Merchant Services APIs flooding eBay with new auctions.
More here.
Rhode Island's top Roman Catholic leader has asked Rep. Patrick Kennedy (pictured) to stop taking Communion over his support for abortion rights.
Kennedy, a Democrat, is the son of the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy and a scion of the most prominent Catholic family in modern U.S. politics.
What about other Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights?
Does the abortion question very from one diocese to another? If not, was Patrick Kennedy’s father, Sen. Ted Kennedy also asked to refrain from taking communion?
Ted Kennedy also supported abortion rights as do most Democrats in Washington, so what about John Kerry, Chris Dodd and other pro-abortion lawmakers in Washington?
Another question: why did Patrick Kennedy wait for nearly three years before criticizing his Bishop about the Communion ban?
It is interesting that this exchange was comes on the 46th anniversary of the assassination of Patrick Kennedy's uncle, John F. Kennedy, the nation's first Catholic president
Link
This was a winner in a recent cartoon caption contest by Indianapolis Star cartoonist Gary Varvel.
Mr. Alumnus M.L. "Red" Cashion (upper photo) is the current NFL Trainer of Referees.
It wasn’t long until Red’s “First Dowwwnnn!” call became well-known to fans and players alike.
A police officer testified that the 15-year-old girl accused of killing her 9-year-old neighbor confessed to the crime, saying that she did it so she would "know what it felt like to kill someone."
There's big news for climate change students.
A hacker has gotten into the computers at Hadley CRU, Britain's largest climate research institute and a proponent of global warming, and seems to have uncovered evidence of substantial fraud in reporting the "evidence" on global warming; the unlawful destruction of records to cover up this fraud, conspiracy, and deceit in the entire operation.
While hacking into the institute's records is inappropriate if not illegal, the activities disclosed appear illegal and damaging to science and the economies of the world.
Link here and here.
...from Matt Drudge
Once again Fox News stands head and shoulders above the others with Anderson Cooper barely edging our Chris Matthews for last place.
We wonder if CNN regrets dumping Aaron Brown (pictured) for Anderson “cold oatmeal” Cooper. Brown wasn’t the most exciting newsman around but at least he could talk at the camera without stammering.
Slim and sleek as it is, the iPhone is really the Hummer of cellphones.
It’s a data guzzler. Owners use them like minicomputers, which they are, and use them a lot.Not only do iPhone owners download applications, stream music and videos and browse the Web at higher rates than the average smartphone user, but the average iPhone owner can also use 10 times the network capacity used by the average smartphone user.
The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T’s cellular network strains to meet the demand.
Another result is outraged customers.
Somali pirates attacked the container ship Maersk Alabama (pictured) for the second time in seven months. Private guards on board the US-flagged ship repelled the attack with gunfire and a high-decibel noise device.
Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy Seal sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a night-time attack.
Information about the first Maersk Alabama hijacking can be found here.
Click here for more information about the second Maersk Alabama hijacking.
What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?
Here’s a case study.
On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”
The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify. Guess what, only one state qualifies - Louisiana.
Louisiana is the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.
Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.
How much will this cost to get Landrieu’s vote?
According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
More here including the incredibly complicated language of that section of the bill.
"We didn't even have to advertise in the paper this year," Captain Thomas Fenton with the Salvation Army said. "We're getting a lot of applications this year and a lot of first-time applicants."
Captain Fenton said applications are up 100 percent this year when compared with last.
"We're seeing people from all walks of life now," Fenton said. "I think the economy has frightened people. It's frightened them no matter what they earn."
It's something a spokesperson for the regional Salvation Army said he is seeing statewide.
We thought Salvation Army red kettle bell ringers were all volunteers. Most of them in Colorado are paid somewhere in the $8.50 to $9 an hour range.
Link
Two fingers to technology!
Their missing thumb and index fingertips give you the freedom to touch, tap, stroke, slide and pinch your devices' controls in any way you desire.
The cost is a little over $33 a pair plus shipping from the UK.
More information here.
Chicago politics, where voting is such a revered civic duty that people do it even after they're dead, cold, stiff, stuffed, boxed and buried beneath the permafrost for years, has now come to D.C. with the Obama administration.
This afternoon comes the most encouraging economic news, courtesy of our keen-eyed buddy Rick Klein over at ABC, that the Obama administration's $787-billion economic stimulus has, for example, thankfully created 30 new jobs in a little-known rural corner of Arizona at a cost to American taxpayers of only $761,420 ($25,380.67 per job).
So the people of that 15th Congressional District in staunchly Republican Arizona should be pretty happy about this.
Trouble is, there is no 15th Congressional District in Arizona. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. Doesn't exist. Not in Arizona. Not even on paper at the Democratic National Committee. There are only eight. Period.
The administration's recovery.gov website reported these jobs as being created there.
The report goes on:
But then the trouble is that just months after grandly unveiling the recovery.gov website to showcase its economic prowess and tech-savvy, the Obama administration just spent 18 million additional taxpayer dollars to redesign the still new website.
And that site proudly also reported nonexistent new stimulus spending not just in Arizona but other states across the country.
How many other stimulus jobs have been reported as saved in fictional congressional districts?
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Regardless of how lively an election season might be, a new study shows that more 3.3 million voters on current registration rolls across the country are dead.
Another 12.9 million remain on voter registration lists in an area where they are no longer alive.
We wonder if there is anything to the rumor about the George Soros-funded SOS Project? It’s a liberal strategy to install a liberal Secretary of States in every state to aid and abet Democrat voter fraud perpetrated by ACORN and the SEIU and UAW labor unions.
This is not your fathers Democratic party!
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Just who is Guy Fieri anyway? He is the popular host of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and two other TV shows on Food Network.
A picture of my cave
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