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Mikey
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Posted: Mon Dec 12th, 2005 02:34 pm |
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MARYSVILLE, Ohio -- Quit smoking, or you're fired. 
That's what Scotts Miracle-Gro is telling its employees. If they don't quit smoking by October, they'll lose their jobs.
The lawn and garden company is trying to keep health insurance costs down by promoting healthy lifestyles for its employees.
Its chairman and chief executive, James Hagedorn, said the company shouldn't have to shoulder health risks for employees who smoke. It pays for 75 percent of employees' health insurance.
The Ohio-based company has 6,000 employees. It said it can fire smokers legally in 21 states.
Workers who smoke can get free counseling, nicotine patches and classes on quitting.
A spokesman said the company hasn't yet decided how it will enforce the smoking ban.
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marc
Supporter
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Posted: Mon Dec 12th, 2005 01:10 pm |
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| LOL....Get a life...Spend more time on pedophile priests....
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Mon Dec 12th, 2005 11:07 am |
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Raunchy 'South Park' Virgin Mary Episode Angers Catholics
POSTED: 6:17 am PST December 9, 2005
NEW YORK -- "South Park" has proved again that nothing's sacred.
The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is condemning an episode of "South Park" that it said "defiled" the Virgin Mary.
The cartoon, which runs on Comedy Central, features an episode this week titled "Bloody Mary," in which a South Park character claims to have been sprayed with blood from a body orifice of a Virgin Mary statue. When Pope Benedict investigates, he declares that she's just having her period.
The Catholic League is urging the board of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, to apologize to Catholics and stop the episode from airing the next several nights as scheduled.
The Catholic League notes that Viacom board member Joseph Califano is a practicing Catholic, and that Thursday was the church's feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.
http://www.nbc4.tv/irresistible/5499799/detail.html
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Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 03:41 pm |
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Randy in Pensacola wrote: Mikey wrote: Dave wrote: Segments of the population here (A.K.A. Minorities) do use blackmail to change the legal system to do what they think it should in a lot of cases.
I agree with ya Mikey, he shoulda gotten that shot years ago. It's impossible to undo the damage he's done at this point. I don't really care what he's written or what he's done since. The damage is irreversible at this point. And it's become generational too. Now his son is in prison for attempted murder (I think that's the charge)
At least with the Rodney King thing, I was ready for any "Festivities". I still have plenty of party favors on hand in case anything happens here.
Didn't this guy find "Isalm".??..I thought they looked forward to death.. Thats only if you strap a bomb to thier ass...... Well..I bet the LA Bomb Squad wouldnt mind the practice...
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Randy in Pensacola
Supporter
| Joined: | Wed Nov 3rd, 2004 |
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| Posts: | 935 |
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 03:39 pm |
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Mikey wrote: Dave wrote: Segments of the population here (A.K.A. Minorities) do use blackmail to change the legal system to do what they think it should in a lot of cases.
I agree with ya Mikey, he shoulda gotten that shot years ago. It's impossible to undo the damage he's done at this point. I don't really care what he's written or what he's done since. The damage is irreversible at this point. And it's become generational too. Now his son is in prison for attempted murder (I think that's the charge)
At least with the Rodney King thing, I was ready for any "Festivities". I still have plenty of party favors on hand in case anything happens here.
Didn't this guy find "Isalm".??..I thought they looked forward to death.. Thats only if you strap a bomb to thier ass......
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Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 03:38 pm |
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Dave wrote: Segments of the population here (A.K.A. Minorities) do use blackmail to change the legal system to do what they think it should in a lot of cases.
I agree with ya Mikey, he shoulda gotten that shot years ago. It's impossible to undo the damage he's done at this point. I don't really care what he's written or what he's done since. The damage is irreversible at this point. And it's become generational too. Now his son is in prison for attempted murder (I think that's the charge)
At least with the Rodney King thing, I was ready for any "Festivities". I still have plenty of party favors on hand in case anything happens here.
Didn't this guy find "Isalm".??..I thought they looked forward to death..
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 03:28 pm |
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Segments of the population here (A.K.A. Minorities) do use blackmail to change the legal system to do what they think it should in a lot of cases.
I agree with ya Mikey, he shoulda gotten that shot years ago. It's impossible to undo the damage he's done at this point. I don't really care what he's written or what he's done since. The damage is irreversible at this point. And it's become generational too. Now his son is in prison for attempted murder (I think that's the charge)
At least with the Rodney King thing, I was ready for any "Festivities". I still have plenty of party favors on hand in case anything happens here.
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weasle
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 02:54 pm |
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| ya know this seems to be a la thing, you guys might as well throw out your court system , as it seem segments of your population, use blackmail to reverse the verdics of your courts. my 02.
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Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 02:48 pm |
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I wonder how many people are going to wind up dead over it??..Most of them rioting will probably have no idea as to why he is being executed..They just see the "white man" killing off another black man..Sickening to think that people will stand up in defense of a cold blooded murderer...Maybe the governement can create another hurricane and have it hit LA this time..you know..the way they did in NO... ..In my opinion...they should have given him that needle a long time ago..
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Sun Dec 11th, 2005 02:29 pm |
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L.A. worried about riots if 'Tookie' executed
(I ain't that worried, I got plenty of "00" shot and slugs for the 12 gauge. Left-overs from the Rodney King verdicts...) 
CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Sat. Dec. 10 2005 11:46 PM ET
Authorities in Los Angeles are concerned about possible rioting if the co-founder of the Crips street gang, Stanley "Tookie" Williams, is executed as planned.
Williams, 51, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison on Tuesday.
However, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is currently weighing Williams' request for clemency. It's not clear when a decision on that might come.
Fearing a repeat of the 1992 race riots in which 52 people died, police, schools and community groups have been told to prepare for violence if clemency is not granted.
Robin Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said the organization had received "credible" threats of violence if Williams is put to death.
There are also fears that Williams' execution could cause unrest in the prison system.
For that reason, all prisoners at San Quentin will be locked down during the execution, and there is the expectation that other state prisons will choose to do the same.
Williams has spent 24 years on death row for the shooting deaths of four people in 1979. He was convicted in 1981 of killing a convenience store worker and, days later, killing two motel owners and their daughter during a robbery.
His case has gained wide media attention because of the growing support of many -- including celebrities such as Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx and Archbishop Desmond Tutu -- who say Williams has turned his life around in jail.
Williams has written nine anti-gang books aimed at young people, been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace and Literature Prize, and his "Protocol for Street Peace" has been used by rival gangs to broker gang truces.
Prosecutors, and some of the families of Williams' victims, say nothing he does now changes the fact that Williams fatally shot four people.
The Crips co-founder denies committing the murders.
A California governor has not granted clemency since 1967, when Ronald Reagan spared the life of a brain-damaged killer.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051210/tookie_riots_051210/20051210?hub=World
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marc
Supporter
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Posted: Sat Dec 10th, 2005 04:17 pm |
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Mozilla to Fix 'Minor' Firefox Bug
Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service
The first Firefox 1.5 security vulnerability, made public Thursday, is not as critical as initially perceived, but a patch will be available to fix it early next year, a Mozilla executive says.
Mozilla plans to repair the hole in the latest version of its open-source browser when it releases its next regularly scheduled stability build of Firefox. That should happen in late January or early February, said Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering for Mozilla. Firefox 1.5 was released November 30.
"Based on the information we have, it's a low-severity issue, but we will address it anyway," he said in an interview Thursday.
Researchers Describe Glitch
Packet Storm Security on Wednesday released code that takes advantage of the vulnerability, which can cause a buffer overflow and put users at risk of a denial of service attack when running the browser, according to a posting Thursday by independent security consultant John Bambenek on the SANS Internet Storm Center Web site.
According to the posting, the vulnerability is in the browser's history.dat file, which stores a user's history of Web sites visited. It can be exploited by crafting an abnormally long URL with perhaps a few million characters. If a user navigates to a site that exploits the hole, "it will crash the browser each time it is started after going to such a page," Bambenek wrote in the posting.
Security research company Secunia Thursday gave the bug a rating of "not critical" in a report on its Web site.
Problem Rare, Mozilla Says
Schroepfer said a team of volunteers and Mozilla engineers never discovered a denial-of-service problem using the proof of concept code from Packetstorm.
"We have no independent confirmation that it crashes, not for lack of trying," he said.
Schroepfer said that when engineers tried to recreate the problem, the browser worked sluggishly and took an exceptionally long time to load a Web page, but only after the browser was closed and then restarted after the first security breach. However, the browser will not crash.
"Eventually, it will process and will start properly," he said.
Furthermore, Schroepfer said it would be extremely rare for someone to visit a site that exploits the hole during a typical Web-browsing session.
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zippo
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 8th, 2005 07:22 pm |
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I saw this on the “Today” show this morning. It is a link to a web site that tells you how to get around a lot of the IVR systems (voice response units that make you press buttons) and get to a real person. Of course now that is public knowledge, they will probably change the access route.
http://paulenglish.com/ivr/
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zippo
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 8th, 2005 04:10 pm |
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Mikey wrote: Police: Officer Zaps Partner After Soda Dispute
POSTED: 6:19 am CST December 8, 2005
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. -- Authorities said a police officer in Michigan used a Taser stun gun on his partner during an argument about stopping for a soft drink.
The suspect was fired after the Nov. 3 incident and is charged with assault.
Ronald Dupuis, 32, could get up to 93 days in jail if convicted.
Authorities said Dupuis asked partner Prema Graham to stop at a store for a soft drink, but she refused and instead kept driving back to headquarters.
Authorities said the partners struggled over the steering wheel, and Dupuis hit Graham's leg with his department-issued Taser gun. She wasn't seriously hurt. I don't abiut now, but back in the late 60's Hamtramck had the single lagest concentration of Polish people outside of Warsaw Poland
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Mikey
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 8th, 2005 02:59 pm |
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Police: Officer Zaps Partner After Soda Dispute
POSTED: 6:19 am CST December 8, 2005
HAMTRAMCK, Mich. -- Authorities said a police officer in Michigan used a Taser stun gun on his partner during an argument about stopping for a soft drink.
The suspect was fired after the Nov. 3 incident and is charged with assault.
Ronald Dupuis, 32, could get up to 93 days in jail if convicted.
Authorities said Dupuis asked partner Prema Graham to stop at a store for a soft drink, but she refused and instead kept driving back to headquarters.
Authorities said the partners struggled over the steering wheel, and Dupuis hit Graham's leg with his department-issued Taser gun. She wasn't seriously hurt.
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Thu Dec 8th, 2005 12:31 pm |
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House votes to put off tax increase
BY KEVIN G. HALL and JAMES KUHNHENN
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
December 8, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to delay a scheduled tax increase that would hit about 19 million taxpayers next year and may still have an impact on 30 million people a year by 2010.
House members voted 414-4 to extend by a year the current income-exemption levels for the Alternative Minimum Tax. The Senate already had approved the extension, as part of a broader tax-cut package.
If the House and Senate pass identical bills containing the AMT terms, as is likely, President George W. Bush is expected to sign the legislation into law.
The AMT affects few families with incomes below $50,000, but increasing numbers at every income level above that, up to $1 million.
Its impact varies depending on eligibility for tax deductions under the regular income tax.
Because the AMT isn't adjusted for annual inflation, income levels that once were high increasingly are only middle-class, so each year more and more people become subject to the AMT.
The House's extension would exempt from AMT taxation the first $58,000 of income for married couples filing jointly and the first $40,250 for individual tax filers.
Without the extension, the amount of income that's exempted from the AMT would fall to levels that were set before tax-law changes in 2001 and 2003 -- $45,000 for married couples and $33,750 for individuals.
This year, 3.6 million Americans, fewer than 3% of tax filers, were affected by the AMT, sometimes called a stealth tax. Failure to extend the higher exemption levels would have exposed 19 million taxpayers in 2006, or 14% of taxpayers.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that almost one in four taxpayers could be hit by the AMT by 2010 unless a permanent fix is adopted.
House sponsor Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y., said the taxpayers who would be spared tax increases in 2006 otherwise would have paid, on average, $2,736 more.
"It would be crushing to millions of American families and taxpayers to increase their tax burden by more than $2,700," Reynolds said in a statement.
The extension puts off the larger battle over eliminating the AMT.
By 2010, unless changes are made, two-thirds of the 26 million taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 will be subject to the AMT. More than 85% of taxpayers with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000 a year will, too.
The AMT generates huge revenues, and lawmakers would have to either raise revenue or cut spending elsewhere to offset its loss.
The extension alone will cut revenue by $12.5 billion in 2006, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means, which wrote the extension.
If the AMT were eliminated, it would cost the Treasury $600 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
What's the AMT?
The Alternative Minimum Tax was enacted in 1969 to prevent higher-income taxpayers from using credits, deductions and other measures to shield all their income from taxation. It parallels the regular income tax, but disallows many tax preferences available under the usual income tax. Taxpayers must calculate how each tax would affect their taxable income and pay the higher of the two amounts.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Wed Dec 7th, 2005 09:08 pm |
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'Fat Little Brother' Jeb Bush Honored By Castro's Comment
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday that he was "honored" Cuban President Fidel Castro had referred to him as President Bush's "fat little brother in Florida."
During a Nov. 17 speech at the University of Havana, Castro made the comment while questioning whether the governor had helped a suspected anti-Cuba terrorist enter the United States. Students responded with laughter.
"I'm flattered and honored," Bush replied with a smile, but then turned serious.
"I will take any criticism from Fidel Castro, of all people, as an honor given the fact that, you know, 8 million people, I believe, live on the island, 8 million people are repressed and they've been that way for 40 or 50 years," Bush said.
"To be criticized by a man like that who has repressed people for such an extended period of time is a high honor," the governor added. "He can call me whatever he wants."
In his speech, Castro insisted his comment was intended as constructive criticism.
"Forgive me for using the term `fat little brother,"' the Cuban leader said, according to a transcript obtained by The Miami Herald. "It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health."
Undoubtedly, the 6-foot, 4-inch, 52-year-old governor has put on a few pounds since taking office in 1999. He weighs 225 pounds, said Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj.
The ideal weight for a man of his height, frame and age ranges from 181 to 207 pounds, according to Weight Watchers International.
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Dave
Supporter
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Posted: Wed Dec 7th, 2005 09:05 pm |
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Suspicious Passenger Fatally Shot On AA Flight At MIA
MIAMI -- A federal air marshal fatally shot a suspicious passenger who was on board an American Airlines jet that had landed at Miami International Airport on Wednesday. MSNBC said two law enforcement agencies confirmed the fatality.
MSNBC said the suspect was shot as he fled onto the jet bridge outside the plane.
The plane had just arrived from Colombia and was headed to Orlando, the broadcast reports said. Television images showed police SWAT officers surrounding the plane. The shooting happened at about 2 p.m., on AA flight 924, according to NBC6 in Miami.
NBC6's Patricia Andreu reported that two air marshals were on the flight. She said they overheard the suspect talking about a bomb and confronted him. The man then reportedly tried to get off the plane, and the air marshals fired their weapons.
MSNBC reported that the man had boarded with a carry-on bag and shouted out that he had a bomb in the bag prior to the shooting.
Mary Gardner, a passenger on the plane, said she was three rows back in the coach section and saw a woman running after a man through the aisle toward the front of the plan.
Gardner said she heard shots after hearing the woman yell that her husband was bipolar and had not been medicated. Her husband was presumably the man who was fatally shot.
MSNBC reported that officials said the incident started when the man, who was sitting near the back of the plane with his wife, began arguing with her. He reportedly stood up, grabbed his carry-on bag, and began making his way toward the front of the plane while the plane was still being boarded. She reportedly ran after him. After air marshals confronted him, the man refused to comply with their orders, MSNBC reported, and they shot him.
Copyright 2005 by NBC4.tv. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Vero Steve
Supporter
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Posted: Wed Dec 7th, 2005 12:47 am |
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Randy in Pensacola wrote: Vero Steve wrote: I like this guy, why can't he immigrate here............. Lets trade 50 of ours for one of him........
Don't we have a whole bunch down in Gitmo??? Let's trade them all for him.............LOL
Last edited on Wed Dec 7th, 2005 12:48 am by Vero Steve |
Randy in Pensacola
Supporter
| Joined: | Wed Nov 3rd, 2004 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 935 |
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Posted: Wed Dec 7th, 2005 12:36 am |
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Vero Steve wrote: I like this guy, why can't he immigrate here............. Lets trade 50 of ours for one of him........
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Vero Steve
Supporter
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Posted: Wed Dec 7th, 2005 12:35 am |
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| I like this guy, why can't he immigrate here.............
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