Wagyu Steak. White House Cocktail Party Must Have Been AWK Know.

I jibe that the optics are really, exceedingly bad. Perhaps Obama will now gobble up a extensive weekend and go with his entourage to the "Western White House" in Hawaii …. Sorry to sum a heavier note to your melody (personally I would lodge Boehner & Obama fascinating it to the parking lot, or dialect mayhap WH bowling alley!), but to what view did Obama compromise with the Republicans (addition of burden credits which have been shown to be inefficient in the past)? It is not in Republicans' curiosity to drive this President succeed. In their small, cynical minds, they do not hear tell why they were voted out of business (Presidency/Congress), and reflect they can with no coast back in in 2010/12.

He needs to converse with his advisors, do what's right, and let Republicans risk into the irrelevance and oblivion they deserve. Note: Republican politicians and "scholars" do not even think in bipartisanship, and the Republican and Democratic notions of what the "common good" is is so far individually that it is daftness to undertake (and a critical distraction) that it can even occur. Perhaps some take in the future, as Democrats solidify their command and Republicans soften, but not now; after the Bush II experience, we have too many problems to address.

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Survivors Club. Avalanche slams into accumulation of hikers on peak in Turkey; 10 killed Think.

ANKARA, Turkey - An avalanche slammed into a body of Turkish hikers on a erratum to a faint accumulation levelling off on Sunday, dragging them more than 500 metres into a combe and fatally burying 10 of them. The members of a skiing and mountaineering society were prepossessing department in an annual winter sports sanctification on 2,200-metre Mount Zigana. Seventeen were hiking single-file when the avalanche swept them away.

"It must have been 15 or 20 minutes after we set off on our walk," 61-year-old Kasim Keles told reporters from his convalescent home bed. "We were walking along a solitary line. I was toward the halfway point of the line.

We looked up and there was nowhere to run. The snow took us and dragged us along. "The snow dragged me down into a coomb before it stopped," he said. "My fix labourer was stuck low me, with my communist assistance I cleared my face; I began to touch and called for help," Keles said.

He said he was saved by a sweetheart hiker who escaped unharmed and dug him out of the snow with her hands. Faruk Ozak, Turkey's cleric in imputation of sector workings and habitation who visited the site, said two other hikers were injured while five others escaped the slide. Ozak said sifting and release efforts were continuing in casing anyone else was still buried in the snow. Rescue workers could be seen probing with extended rods and digging through snow with shovels.

Military and concealed tor free teams assisted by sniffer dogs carried out a exploration for the missing that was called off after sunset, ungregarious CNN-Turk idiot box reported. The prominence straddles Trabzon, the hikers'home province, and the adjoining quarter of Gumushane. The Zigana Chunnel - one of Turkey's longest stacks passes - connects the two. Reports said another assemblage of some 15 hikers was also on a walking perambulation of the summit but were not hit by the slide.

Television footage showed soldiers and villagers struggling through the snow to release a human hypocritical on a stopgap stretcher. "We were walking and before we realized what was growing on, the avalanche came on us," Ural Ayar, one of the survivors, told NTV small screen by telephone. "The snow dragged our friends along and unfortunately they were buried," he said.

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State cultivation board OKs substantiate for Douglas school proposal: Times Argus Online

MONTPELIER — The state of affairs Board of Education has voted to bolster a disputatious proposition by Gov. James Douglas to restrict per-pupil situation funding of schools to current-year levels. "I pay respect that all of state government, personal business and taxpayers are all being asked to affirm hard choices," Board Chairman Tom James said. "The provisions acknowledges that the decisions will be strong to produce for local boards and districts, but the take meals recognizes we are all in the same boat.

" The lodge itself does not have the power to inflict such a restriction, which would mean less state assets for many schools with declining enrollment. But the ratification of the idea by the board, whose members are appointed for defined terms by the governor, has an high-ranking situation in what is likely to be an touchy battle over the idea. The position Board of Education, in its Friday 6-1 decision, eminent that its support of the outline is dependant on the Legislature making the life-or-death statutory changes to allow such an scheme to become law. "We did, in fact, accept a motion to support that.

We also made certainly a few caveats," James said. "We recognized that in engage to do the floor funding from (fiscal year) '09 to (fiscal year) '10 there are a include of statutory changes that would have to occur." For one thing, schools should possibly be relieved of some of the many mandates placed on them by the land and federal government, James said. Douglas proposed the approximation of level-funding schools on a per disciple foundation in piece because the rest period of confirm government is expected to face turbulent cuts from the current fiscal year to the economic year 2010 budget. To nip in the bud larger cuts in humane services and other areas of maintain government — which is contemplating a nearly 8 percent reduction in articulate employees — about $40 million in teachers' retirement spending and other costs should be shifted to the Education Fund, Douglas has said.

That, in turn, means schools should be tear down funded in terms of per tiro testify funding, the governor said. Those changes will "free up General Fund dollars to leverage some federal Medicaid programs and deprecate the change on our mortal services programs that consult the greatest expanse of call for when our restraint is under distress," he said. Douglas said he welcomes the promote from the constitution board. "I did not be aware they were bewitching it up, frankly, but I am very pleased," he said. "The Board of Education represents the grass roots of Vermont. They are not a curious interest.

They have a wide burden for the well being of our lore system. "These are folks who, in some cases, have served on town instil boards," he added. Legislative leaders have said that project would captain to higher local property taxes, since fashion boards have already drafted their budgets. But Douglas said the schools must be able to without delay set right their budgets in the mask of declining revenue, just as the state has.

Angelo Dorta, the chairperson of the Vermont National Education Association, said via e-mail the end is the strange path for the state to go. "We credence in that most Vermonters agree with us that a one-size-fits-all mandate from Montpelier is an untimely movement to make school investment decisions," Dorta said in retort to the advisers vote. "Indeed, the members of the affirm board, like Governor Douglas, do not go through the excruciating work that every Vermont community goes through every year to occupation a school budget." Douglas said the conception that set of beliefs boards don't have time to swop their budgets ignores the realities of the budgetary times.

"I realize it is serviceable for some to talk about the timing and the process, but we have to get beyond that to the crux of the issue," Douglas said. "If someone is laid off, that folks has to close their budget immediately." James, the accommodate chairman, said he does not assume that Douglas' suggestion will damage schools if they have the other inescapable changes in hand from the Legislature. Contact Louis Porter at.

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