PNC Acquiring RBC’s US Retail Banking Unit for $3.4 Billion MAN ROBBS A BANK FOR $1 AND GETS FREE HEALTHCARE IN THE US RBC bank Priscillantopx says: http://t.co/Di8J7XU WEEK IN REVIEW: Panel holds contentious hearing on Boeing suit rbc bank
Continue reading …It wasn’t the crazy Jackass stunts that killed him, but rather a fiery car crash after a night of drinking with friends . Jackass cast member Ryan Dunn and an unidentified passenger riding in his 2007 Porsche died after the car left the roadway and burst into flames around 3am in…
Continue reading …Traveling the 515 km (320 miles) from Tokyo to Osaka by Shinkansen bullet train currently requires 2 hours and 25 minutes (and costs a small fortune, too). Come 2045, travel between Japan’s two largest metro areas will take just over one hour, following the launch of the country’s longest maglev track , which just received construction approval from Tokyo. The nine trillion yen project (approximately $112 billion) was first proposed in the 1970s, but was tabled indefinitely due to its astronomical costs, most of which stem from an extensive network of tunnels that will represent 60 percent of the route. You’ll be able to get your Japanese Maglev fix beginning in 2027, when the Central Japan Railway launches its high-speed route between Tokyo and Nagoya. One notable neighbor to the west is already operating its own maglev train. China’s Shanghai Transrapid has been blasting riders to Pudong airport since 2004, and once achieved a top speed of 501km/h (311 mph). The country is also constructing a 1000km/h vacuum-based train that it plans to launch within the next few years. Japan speeding ahead with 500km/h Maglev train originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Via USA Today comes word of the splashy comics company Image putting out a 9/11 Truther comicbook titled “The Big Lie” (h/t to Four Color Media Monitor ): In The Big Lie, the heroine is a woman named Sandra, who lost her husband, Carl, during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. A particle physicist working at the Large Hadron Collider, she figures out a practical way to travel back in time, so she ventures from present day to Manhattan an hour before the first plane hits the towers on Sept. 11, 2001. She rushes to his office at a risk-management consulting agency, but since she has aged 10 years, Carl can't quite accept that it's her. And even though she brings evidence on her iPad, neither her spouse nor his co-workers believe her warnings. “The meat of the story is her trying to convince these 'experts' that the terrorist attack is about to happen,” Veitch says. “So it's essentially a taut emotional drama with the facts and questions surrounding 9/11 sewed into it.” Note the word “experts” in quotes, there. Now, just imagine Veitch saying that, and then the following, about Barack Obama's birth certificate: Going into this project, he didn't consider himself a “Truther,” yet living during the eras of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran/Contra and the invasion of Iraq, Veitch admits that he's skeptical about any “official” story provided by the government. “Reading the 9/11 Commission Report, it's pretty clear that a lot of important evidence about the lead-up to the attacks and the collapse of the towers was ignored or glossed over,” he explains. “And I'm pretty angry about the aftermath: how Iraq was invaded based on false intelligence and the occupation mismanaged resulting in over 100,000 civilian deaths.” Remarkably, Veitch says that “he has aimed the book itself straight at the middle.” Really? Because he then also says this: …to “those folks who might not have thought about these things much in the last 10 years or who participate in the ideological back and forth,” says Veitch, who wants to tackle other historical “big lies” with the series. First, since when has it been “down the middle” to wonder about the “true” cause of the 9/11 attacks? Second, after a whole article of essentially stating “Well, I'm just asking questions,” the truth (no pun intended) comes out here by Veitch saying that he wants “to tackle other historical 'big lies' with the series.” Other?? And if that doesn't convince you, then check this out : Well, I was waiting to break the news, but I think my wait is over. USA Today has done a fantastic job reporting on “The Big Lie.” I have been intimately involved in this project, and if anyone has questions I would love to answer them. A temporary website has been set up for our project: http://truthbetoldcomics.com/ Everyone can be a part of this project really. I am still in need of $$ to finish paying the artists and pay for distribution. We have raised $13,000 of an estimated $25,000 neccessity. This has been an incredible project of artists and activists thus far! We are excited to bring “The Big Lie” forward, and thanks to Brian Truitt of USA Today for excellent coverage. That was posted by “Nor Cal Truth” who runs this Truther site . He dedicates his own post to “The Big Lie” here . So there you have it. Yet another example of the far-left turn modern comics have taken over the last decade. And just when is this story slated to debut? September 7, 2011 — four days before the tenth anniversary of the attacks.
Continue reading …Aeroplane crashed half a mile from the runway on flight between Moscow and northern city of Petrozavodsk At least forty-four people have been killed after a passenger jet crashed in north-west Russia, a government spokesman said. The plane, reportedly carrying 52 people, including nine crew, crashed half a mile from the runway outside the northern city of Petrozavodsk at about 11.40pm local time on Monday. News agencies reported that eight people who survived the crash were seriously injured and taken to hospital. There was no immediate explanation for the crash, but the Interfax news agency quoted the airport director Alexei Kuzmitsky as saying there were “unfavourable weather conditions”. Russian news agencies said the plane, a Russian-made Tu-134 jet, crashed on its final approach to the airport in Petrozavodsk, landing a few hundred yards short of the runway. Petrozavodsk is in the in the province of Karelia, 640km (400 miles) north-west of Moscow. The plane, , the Emergencies Ministry said, carrying 52 people, nine of whom were crew, the news agencies said. News agencies reported that Russian Premier League football referee Vladimir Pettaya was among the victims, as well as one Swedish national. Russia Europe Plane crashes Jo Adetunji guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Three Kentucky coal miners trapped for hours in an underground mine because of flooding remained in good condition Monday and have moved to dry ground inside the complex while waiting to be taken out, a state spokesman said. (June 20)
Continue reading …Eighty-year-old Jack McKeon has accepted an offer to take over as interim manager of the Marlins. He replaces Edwin Rodriguez, who resigned Sunday. McKeon led the Marlins to a World Series title in 2003. (June 20)
Continue reading …Click here to view this media During Sean Hannity’s special last week, featuring Republican propagandist and professional turd-polisher Frank Luntz, South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint joined the show and took questions from Luntz and audience members in one of his focus groups. During this segment DeMint repeated what has become one of the right’s big lies they like to tell on taxes, that half of Americans don’t pay any federal income tax, as though that’s the only tax anyone pays. This reminded me of an article I recently read at AlterNet where Joshua Holland did a nice job debunking that talking point last year. Fox and Drudge Sucker Tea Partiers with a Big Lie About Taxes : Here’s how Fox Nation and the Drudge Report were fanning the flames of their readers’ simmering tribalism last week, courtesy of Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog : Here are Drudge and Fox Nation right now: enlarge Credit: No More Mister Nice Blog Credit: No More Mister Nice Blog Those banner headlines led to an AP story that might make wingnut blood boil, but was in reality about a rather irrelevant bit of Tax Day trivia: Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem. About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability…. Many people continue to labor under the false belief that the United States has a progressive tax system. Here’s the reality: after decades of assault on the taxes that fall disproportionately on the wealthy, we now have an effective flat tax. Poor people in this country pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent. Rich people in this country also pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent. And folks in between pay around 40 percent of their incomes in taxes, give or take 5 percent. The idea that most working people don’t pay taxes — an incredibly popular talking-point on the right — is the product of a rather easy-to-understand Big Lie. You simply pretend that the most progressive tax in the United States, the federal income tax, is the only tax that Americans pay. You move the goal-posts, beginning the discussion with a statement of fact — ‘many people pay no federal income taxes’ — and then shifting to an egregious falsehood: ‘many people pay no taxes .’ It’s a simple but incredibly effective lie of omission. Here are the facts (as I lay ‘em out in my upcoming book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (And Everything Else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know about Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America)). Read on…
Continue reading …After electing its first African American president—thanks in part to a surge of new voters—the US is in danger of seeing “a subtle return of Jim Crow voting laws,” writes EJ Dionne Jr. in the Washington Post . New laws being passed here, supposedly to prevent voter fraud, would…
Continue reading …Jon Stewart faced off against Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday yesterday, debating whether The Daily Show is a form of activism that is pushing a liberal agenda. It was a heated 25-minute interview, where at times Chris Wallace sounded like a shrink trying to figure out what makes Jon Stewart tick, while the Comedy
Continue reading …