The "D" word

Will recession become something worse?

A Depression doesn't have to be Great — bread lines, rampant unemployment, a wipeout in the stock market. The economy can sink into a milder depression, the kind spelled with a lowercase "d."

And it may be happening now.

The trouble is, unlike recessions, which are easy to define, there are no firm rules for what makes a depression. Everyone at least seems to agree there hasn't been one since the epic hardship of the 1930s.

But with each new hard-times headline, most recently an alarming economic contraction of 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter, it seems more likely that the next depression is on its way.

"We're probably in a depression now. But it's not going to be acknowledged until years go by. Because you have to see it behind you," said Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland.

Read the rest here.

Paris Hilton's Clevage

Craig Ferguson: Late, Late Show

As recession saps demand, a world awash in oil

Supertankers that once raced around the world to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for oil are now parked offshore, fully loaded, anchors down, their crews killing time. In the United States, vast storage farms for oil are almost out of room.

As demand for crude has plummeted, the world suddenly finds itself awash in oil that has nowhere to go.

Read the rest here.

Rare Arizona Jaguar Euthanized

From LiveScience:

Rare Arizona Jaguar Euthanized

A rare jaguar captured and collared in Arizona two weeks ago was euthanized after falling ill.

Earth's Highest Microbial Ecosystem Found

Gases rising from deep within the Earth are fueling the world's highest known microbial ecosystems, which are perched on the rim of a 19,850-foot-high Andean volcano along with a few patches of plants, researchers announced today.

Read the rest at LiveScience.

Typical lying repugican

Louisianna's repugican governor Bobby (or more appropriately 'Booby') Jindal, in his response to President Obama’s speech February 24, entirely fabricated the anecdote regarding his helping to rescue victims of Katrina in 2005.

In fact, he was 80 miles away in Baton Rouge during the time the event supposedly took place. Now, even one of his staff has admitted Jindal lied:

“A Jindal spokesperson acknowledged earlier today that the events Jindal recounted to the nation had never occurred and the governor in no way assisted with boat rescues during the hurricane.”
~ Color of Change, “Katrina Survivors Outraged By Jindal’s Lies,” Feb. 28, 2009.

He’s proven he’s full of enough bullshit to be a repugican president.

Color of Change has demanded an apology.

Let's see him talk his way out of this one.

Dimbulb belches

I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be.
I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican Party in a sad-sack state that it’s in.
If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit.
I might get out the hari-kari knife...

~ the child molester Lush Dimbulb

If only ...

Got a set of knives and a whetstone to put an even finer honing on them he can use.

Oh, by the way, that's the repugican party.
The idiot can't even say that correctly.

And I Quote

The GOP's Limbaugh lust is such good news for Democrats.
In this Gallup poll, 45% of independents, 63% of Democrats and even 23% of Republicans disapprove of Limbaugh.
Still, the new leader of the GOP keeps hogging the stage, turning a scheduled 20-minute CPAC speech into an hour of Castro-like oratory, looking a little sweaty and deranged by the end of it.

~ Joan Walsh,

No more glaciers in Glacier National Park by 2020?

From National Geographic News:

It is an often cited statistic that the glaciers at Montana's Glacier National Park will disappear by the year 2030.
However, Daniel Fagre, a U.S. Geological Survey ecologist who works at Glacier, says the park's namesakes will be gone about ten years ahead of schedule.

No more glaciers in Glacier National Park by 2020?

Hypocrisy Has No Term Limit

Vitter Attacks Title X and Planned Parenthood in Omnibus

One might think that a Senator previously caught in a prostitution ring scandal, whose political party simultaneously makes itself out to be the guardians of the national chastity belt, would be a little circumspect about taking actions to limit women's access to basic contraceptive methods and to services that would prevent and treat things like say....sexually transmitted infections.

One might also think that said Senator, whose political party is constantly ranting about the glories of motherhood and against women's right to choose abortion, would be supportive of expanded access for low-income women both to the prenatal and maternal health care services necessary to achieving a healthy pregnancy and birth, and to the contraceptive methods needed to prevent unintended pregnancy in the first place, thereby reducing the number of abortions in the long run.

In the case of Senator David Vitter, one would be wrong.

Senator Vitter apparently has no shame. While he apparently can afford the price of high-end call girl services--and of course then achieve absolution by apologizing for his indiscretions to wife, state, and country--he appears disinterested in making sure low-income women can afford the services they need.

So yesterday, he introduced an amendment to the omnibus spending bill that would prohibit Title X funding from going to Planned Parenthood ...

Read the rest at Reality Check.

Pew study: Cost of locking up Americans too high

This bears repeating ...

The United States has the highest incarceration rate and the biggest prison population of any country in the world, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Most of those in the U.S. corrections system — one in 45 — are already on probation or parole, with one in 100 in prison or jail, the Pew study found.

Those numbers are higher in certain areas of the country, and Georgia tops all states with one in 13 adults in the justice system. The other leading states are Idaho, where one in 18 are in corrections and Texas, where the rate is one in 22. In the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., nearly 5 percent of adults are in the city’s penal system.

This was the first criminal justice study that took into account those on probation and parole as well as federal convicts, Pew said.

Full Story in Reuters

Elongated skulls discovered in Russia

Archeologists in Siberia have found several elongated skulls in the forest.
They're from the 4th century A.D.

The most likely explanation was that ancient communities deliberately deformed the skulls of infants, possibly with the intention of increasing their mental abilities.

Strange Elongated Skulls Discovered

Today is square root day

In addition to Pi day (March 14th), there is Square Root Day, this year ... which is today!

Square root day is held on the date that both the day and the month are both a square root of the last two digits of the year; so this year it’s March 3rd, 2009 (3/3/09). Celebrating is easy. Just do everything in squares, but remember to get you fill because the next time you can celebrate is April 4th 2016.

March is math month with pi day and square root day.

Economic Meltdown Continues

Over at Gawker they made a list of some more tough times in economic news.

Here are the first three:

Warren Buffett, the world's best investor, has his worst financial year ever in 2008. (Still better than your financial year). 2009 will also suck, he says.

Some economists think Ireland is the next Iceland. Meaning its economy will collapse, this year.

One in ten people in California is unemployed. Now, to top it off a drought.

The Facts of Life

It is easy to identify people who can not count to ten.
They are in front of you in the supermarket express lane.

Our Readers

While Carolina Naturally has a worldwide audience we can not forget our domestic readership.
Not only is Carolina Naturally read in every state of the United States, we pretty much blanket the Carolinas with readers in:

Charlotte, Durham, Shelby, Mocksville, Asheville, Brevard, Moresville, Raleigh, Greensboro, Manteo, Hendersonville, Saluda, Franklin, Concord, Harisburg, Kannapolis, Wilmington, Fayetteville, Boone, Statesville, Gastonia, Monroe, New Bern, Murphy, Waynesville, Rutherfordton, Hamlet, Rockingham, Laurinburg, Fuquay-Varina, Sanford, Lumberton, Asheboro, Highlands, Waxhaw, Banner Elk, Blowing Rock, Hatteras, Chimney Rock, Linnvile, Old Fort, Black Mountain, Kings Mountain, Goldsboro, Cherokee, Beaufort, Mount Airy, Elkin and Winston-Salem to name a few in North Carolina.

And no, we aren't forgetting our readers in South Carolina, in:

Greer, Columbia, Greenville, Lexington, Charleston, Conway, Spartanburg, Myrtle Beach, Murrels Inlet, Georgetown, Aiken, Fort Mill, Clemson, Rock Hill, Florence, Inman, Orangeburg, Winnsboro, Darlington, Easley, Red Bank, Newberry, Lancaster, Suwanee, Chester, Moncks Corner, Beaufort and Camden to name a few.

Gunmen attack Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan

At least a dozen men ambushed Sri Lanka's cricket team with rifles, grenades and rocket launchers Tuesday, converging on the squad's convoy as it drove through a traffic circle near an eastern Pakistani stadium.

Seven players, an umpire and a coach were wounded, none with life-threatening injuries, but six policemen and a driver died.

The attackers struck as a convoy carrying the squad and match officials reached a traffic circle 300 yards (meters) from the main sports stadium in the eastern city of Lahore, triggering a 15-minute gunbattle with police guarding the vehicles.

The assault, just ahead of a match, was one of the worst terrorist attacks on a sports team since Palestinian militants killed 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Read the rest here.

*****

While Cricket isn't my sport of choice, attacking a sports team with guns and rockets is so far over the line absurdity would be inadequate a term for it.

The people of Pakistan should not allow this to take place in their country. I am sure if you were to speak with any number of Pakistanis on the street they would not like or want such lunacy on their streets.

Take back your streets!

This message is for anywhere lunatics, gangs, thugs and such try to rear their collective ugly heads.

Troopers: Man Who Wanted Last Cigarette Led Them On Chase

From the "You, stupid MotherF@#ker" Department:

Troopers said icy roads didn't slow down a man who fled authorities in south Charlotte.
Troopers said the driver led them on a high-speed chase around 1 a.m. Tuesday, reaching speeds up to 90 miles per hour.
The driver led troopers up and down Interstate 77 before the chase ended near Clanton Road.
When troopers asked the driver why he didn't stop, he told them he wanted one last cigarette.
The suspect is charged with driving while impaired.

Fred Lane's wife released 8 years after killing him

Deidra lane who in 2000 killed her estranged husband Fred lane, a former Carolina Panther star, was released from prison this morning after more than eight years behind bars.

Now 33, Deidra Lane pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2003 and was sentenced to at least seven years and 11 months in prison.

Fred Lane, 24, was shot to death at close range with a 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun at the couple's southeast Mecklenburg home. The first blast struck his chest. The second hit the back of his head.

She claimed to be a battered wife, while prosecutors argued she ambushed her husband as he returned home from a trip. Police found his body just inside the front door. His still-packed bag lay nearby, his keys hung in the door lock.

Lane was the Panthers all-time leading rusher at the time. He had a promising career with the Indianapolis Colts, where he'd just been traded.

“I've learned to deal with it,” Fred Lane Sr. said Monday of his son's slaying. “My wife and I have prayed about it. I've prayed that my son is OK. We feel he's in heaven.

“We'll always miss him and regret what happened.”

Fred Lane Sr. said he wants to continue to see his granddaughter, who is 8 and has been living with Deidra Lane's parents in Columbia.

Defense lawyers said Deidra Lane was a battered wife who feared for her life when she killed her husband.

In the weeks before the killing, while she was nine months pregnant, Fred Lane rammed her head into a wall, broke open her lip and threw her down a flight of stairs, her lawyers said.

On the day of the killing, Deidra Lane called 911 sobbing and screaming: “He came in and he started choking me and he said this baby's not mine. He started hitting me. He wouldn't leave me alone. I kept telling him to stop.

“I've never been so scared in my life. He just wanted to hurt me and my baby. And I was so scared I just shot again.”

But Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow said Deidra Lane ambushed her husband, killing him for a $5 million life insurance policy.

Goodenow told the judge that Fred Lane had left his wife. “She had nothing unless Fred Lane was dead,” the prosecutor said. “She had nothing but a $5 million life insurance policy. The high lifestyle of a professional football player's wife was gone.”

Goodenow said Deidre Lane lay in wait for her husband, and shot him the minute he walked through the door: “While he was down and hopeless and dying of a mortal wound, she inflicted another mortal wound. She chased him as he crawled through his own blood to administer that last shot."

The judge ruled that Fred Lane's murder was premeditated and deliberate.

Fred Lane was signed by the Panthers as a free agent in 1997, and at one point was earning about $600,000 a year. He became a quick fan favorite and rushed for 809 yards his rookie year. He was traded to the Indianapolis Colts in April 2000. He was the Panthers' all-time leading rusher with 2,001 yards when he was killed.

Deidra Lane walked out of the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women around 9:30 a.m.

Lane won't be totally free though. For the next nine months, she'll be supervised by probation officials.

Lane has asked to have her supervision transferred to South Carolina, and is awaiting final approval.

Her parents were living in Columbia at the time of Fred Lane's slaying. Charles Gary is a successful businessman there. He ran his own real estate company with about 16 licensed agents, enough to tie it for 10th place in 2000 in the Columbia Business Journal's listing of the city's largest real estate firms.

Deidre Lane also pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to commit bank larceny in connection with the 1998 theft of $41,200 from a Wachovia branch on Providence Road in Charlotte. She was sentenced in 2003 to four months in prison.

Her brother, John Brandon Gary, was convicted of committing five bank robberies in Mecklenburg between 1999 and 2000.

Sentenced to 114 years in prison, Gary was accused of getting away with $310,864 in the bank heists.

His projected release date is April 25, 2101.

*****

The Bitch should have gotten the gas chamber!

Top 10 US Cities With the Most Energy Star Rated Commercial Buildings

Found this over at Treehugger:

For those fond of top ten lists and energy efficiency, the EPA has just released its list of the US cities with the most commercial buildings earning Energy Star ratings in 2008. EPA is quick to point out that the number of building qualifying for this rating have increased 130% from 2007, and these buildings both use 35% less energy than average buildings and emit 35% less CO2. So without anymore more hesitation, here they are:

1. Los Angeles
2. San Francisco
3. Houston
4. Washington DC
5. Dallas-Fort Worth
6. Chicago
7. Denver
8. Minneapolis-St Paul
9. Atlanta
10. Seattle

In order for a building to qualify for an energy star rating, it must score in the top 25% using EPA's National Energy Performance Rating System. For a complete list of Energy Star rated buildings: Energy Star

*****

Who would have thought Los Angeles would have the most 'green buildings'? Green building and brown air ... that's LA for you.

Pinky and The Brain ... and Larry

Pinky and The Brain

Fnancial terrorist

Bernard Madoff is seeking to keep a $7 million Manhattan penthouse and an additional $62 million in assets, saying they are unrelated to the fraud that authorities say cost victims more than $50 billion.
In court papers filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Madoff and his lawyer claim the apartment, $45 million in municipal bonds and $17 million more in a separate account all belong to Madoff's wife, Ruth.

More here

Too Late For Goodbyes

Julian Lennon

What could you buy with AIG's record $62 billion loss?

Putting things in perspective ...

CNN's Peter Wilkinson has been running the numbers on AIG's record $62 billion quarterly loss ... the largest corporate loss in history (AIG lost about $460,000 per minute in the last quarter). In addition to being sufficient to carpet an area the size of Baghdad in $1 bills, $62 billion is enough to:

1. It could pay off the combined national debts of China, Australia, Mexico and Ukraine, according to 2008 estimates by the CIA Factbook, and still have plenty left over for a good night out.

3. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II might not be moving any time soon, but the money could buy 46 Buckingham Palaces, according to a 2008 estimate of its market value by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. And still leave some remaining to buy her weekend retreat, Windsor Castle.

9. AIG lost $460,000 per minute -- which would pay about half the annual pension of former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin.

What would AIG's $62 billion loss buy?.

Britain's vast cement "listening ears" designated a national landmark

In the 1920s the British military used these vast concrete parabolic 'sound-mirrors' to detect approaching aircraft.
The 'Listening Ears' at Denge have recently been designated as a historical preservation site by English Heritage, the government quango in charge of protecting national landmarks.

Acoustic mirrors did work, and could effectively be used to detect slow moving enemy aircraft before they came into sight.
They worked by concentrating sound waves towards a central point, where a microphone would have been located.
However, their use was limited as aircraft became faster.
Operators also found it difficult to distinguish between aircraft and seagoing vessels. In any case, they quickly became obsolete due to the invention of radar in 1932.
The experiment was abandoned, and the mirrors left to decay.
The gravel extraction works caused some undermining of at least one of the structures.

Denge sound mirrors.

And I Quote

I don't really trust a sane person.

~ Lyle Alzado

Unusual Celebrations and Holidays

Today happens to be:

I want you to be happy Day

and

What if cats and dogs had opposable thumbs?, Day

as well as

Unique Names Day

Our Readers

Some of our readers today have been in:

Sheffield, England, United Kingdom
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Paris, Ile-De-France, France
Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium
London, England, United Kingdom
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Virum, Kobenhaven, Denmark
Ruse, Razgard, Bulgaria
Odense, Fyn, Denmark
Woking, England, United Kingdom
Rome, Lazio, Italy
Dehli, Dehli, India
Athens, Attiki, Greece
Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland
Oslo, Oslo, Norway

as well as Spain, Ireland, Russia and Romania.

Daily Horoscope

Today's horoscope says:

You're not out to impress people, you're out to get things done.

Too, true, too true.