j_b

I have never discussed the moon landing as a conspiracy. Fairweather shows again that he is a pathological liar.

Driven to Distraction U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving By MATT RICHTEL In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel. They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways. But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress. On Tuesday, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site. In interviews, the officials who withheld the research offered their fullest explanation to date. The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states. Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking. “We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety. The group petitioned for the information after The Los Angeles Times wrote about the research last year. Mother Jones later published additional details. The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002. The researchers also shelved a draft letter they had prepared for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to send, warning states that hands-free laws might not solve the problem. That letter said that hands-free headsets did not eliminate the serious accident risk. The reason: a cellphone conversation itself, not just holding the phone, takes drivers’ focus off the road, studies showed. The research mirrors other studies about the dangers of multitasking behind the wheel. Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content. [..] Mr. Monk and Mike Goodman, a division head at the safety agency who led the research project, theorize that the agency might have felt pressure from the cellphone industry. Mr. Goodman said the industry frequently checked in with him about the project and his progress. (He said the industry knew about the research because he had worked with it to gather some data). But he could offer no proof of the industry’s influence. more: U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving

I am so sorry. I can't even imagine losing my wife, little less after 8 years of struggle. Keep being strong and looking forward, it'll be worth your while.

Duh ... does FW's shit stink? The same Bush dead-ender who claims to be for "freeeedoooom" while stepping on the neck of whoever he doesn't like. Do you think it is different under Obama? How would you know?

Did you expect an answer? I mean, besides the commie/debtor/puke/etc standard fare?

G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change by Dr James Hansen Jim Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen. It didn't take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama's agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked: The world's major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks. ... For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws: It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants. It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand. Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives." It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short. more: counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey

I must say it is quite puzzling to repeatedly witness a half-wit like yourself harass other posters like Kevbone. You behave like a goon thru and thru.

I am certainly not going to relinquish the possibility of letting you know exactly what I really think of your lame posts and the way they make you appear to your readers; however, as any spray participant with half a functional brain knows, ~99% of my posts discuss the issues at hand while being respectful of those who return me the favor. Needless to say I have no respect for those who for years have had nothing but insults, lies and fear-mongering to reply.

Your continued lame answers leave only 2 choices: a) you have no shame and sounding like a dimwitt day after day is no obstacle to your self-worth or b) you have no shame but have no choice but keep scraping for the bottom of the barrel of human intelligence.

Our resident fascist goons have nothing but fear-mongering and insults to offer and this is all you have to say? Better say nothing!

Great retort, assclown. And you accuse others of being incapable of replying substantively to your nonsense. That's rich coming from a quasi-monosyllabic idiot. Can you point to a single "substantive" answer you'd ever wrote to a point I made? I didn't think so.

Spare us your sandbox level stupidities that illustrate well why the Palin/Bush2/Reagan of this world are taken seriously.

No, you better check your facts: "UC Law School statement: The Law School has received many media requests about Barack Obama, especially about his status as "Senior Lecturer." From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Barack Obama served as a professor in the Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004, during which time he taught three courses per year. Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors, although not full-time or tenure-track. The title of Senior Lecturer is distinct from the title of Lecturer, which signifies adjunct status. Like Obama, each of the Law School's Senior Lecturers have high-demand careers in politics or public service, which prevent full-time teaching. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the Law School, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, but he declined." http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/was_barack_obama_really_a_constitutional_law.html Anyway, I don't intend to get into hair splitting about this since I feel strongly that Bush2 had absolutely no cred and I still ponder the naivity of those who would trust anything coming out of his mouth (cheezy MBA or not)

It's not surprising that to a 4-year old, a B-movie actor/GE spokesman and a life-long frat boy would have more credibility than a professor of constitutional law.

Pols should be held to ethics regarding conflicts of interest and corruption, not their personal lives as long as the media does its job of exposing moralist hypocrites (which it hasn't done). Extra-marital sex is just part of the range of human behavior. I don't think we want representatives 'above' the human experience. You could say the same thing about Reagan and Bush2.

Yeah, right. Every night, Attila has to fight off the hyenas and pillagers roaming around his camp. BTW, do you think your 8 year old can start at the mill next year? Forget about education for your children and having any say about anything. Don't forget to pay your yearly fee to the private fire company ... wait a minute, we are almost back to that point.

Banks own the US government Dean Baker The Guardian Last month, when the US Congress failed to pass a bankruptcy reform measure that would have allowed home mortgages to be modified in bankruptcy, senator Dick Durbin succinctly commented: "The banks own the place." That seems pretty clear. After all, it was the banks' greed that fed the housing bubble with loony loans that were guaranteed to go bad. Of course the finance guys also made a fortune guaranteeing the loans that were guaranteed to go bad (ie AIG), and when everything went bust, the taxpayers got handed the bill. The cost of the bailout will certainly be in the hundreds of billions, if not more than $1tn when it is all over. More importantly, we are looking at the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. The cumulative lost output over the years 2008-2012 will almost certainly exceed $5tn. That comes to more than $60,000 for an average family of four. This is the price that we are paying for the bankers' greed, coupled with incredible incompetence and/or corruption from our regulators. Under these circumstances, it would be reasonable to think that the bankers would be keeping a low profile for a while. That's not the way it works in Washington. The banks are aggressively pushing their case in Congress and Obama administration. Not only are we not going to see bankruptcy reform, but any financial reform package that gets through Congress will probably contain enough loopholes that it will be almost useless. [...] More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jun/30/congress-financial-reform-banks Just to save time to our resident knuckle draggers, I thought I'd insert the content of their most likely contribution (99% probability): commie, ass-face, go lick sack, LOL, welfare recipient, get a job hippie, socialist, whiner, left-wing puke, never-happy type, chicken little, NO it isn't true!, FREEEEEDOM, I think that pretty much covers it but let me know if I forgot anything.

Nice dodge but like what, for example? or is "go lick sack" the full extent of your argumentation?

...

Nope. Do you ever actually meet anyone, btw? Or are you permanently sequestered in your left-wing doomsday bunker, waiting for the imminent revolution? See, I talk about your posts and the way they make you appear, and in response you speculate about my person.

Can you cite one thing I have been wrong about in the last 6 years I have posted here?

I mean, aren't you embarassed when you meet people who know your internet personna?

speaking of making an ass of oneself, I'm reminded of you publicly "retiring" from cc.com then coming back and posting your inane political drivel multiple times a day. just curious - in between your top-notch investigative reporting efforts into the "failings of (unfettered, LOL) capitalism", do you actually climb anything? Wow, I am overwhelmed by your argumentation, per usual.

Now, that was profound. How many big words do you know beside 'commie', 'assface',' go lick sack', huh?

Aren't you tired of continuously making an ass of yourself in public?