If your mother-in-law's mail goes through the Waterbury or Wallingford post offices, she might not have received the birthday card you sent in time.
Apparently managers at the post office have been hiding mail, Ray Arcovio, president of the Waterbury area postal worker's union, told the Waterbury Republican-American. And he wants to sincerely apologize.
Workers have been stuffing mail into closets and unused rooms at mail facilities in Waterbury and Wallingford because they don't know how to keep up with such a high volume of mail, he told the newspaper.
"They're just pushing it aside for the next day," Arcovio told the paper. "We've had issues with them hiding the mail."
In an effort to cut back on costs, the postal service now transfers mail processing from Waterbury to Wallingford.
Arcovio says the problem is being handled.
"We have dealt with it and got the assurance it wouldn't happen again," he told the Republican American. "The employees who see it and are aware of it are fearful to speak out about it for fear of repercussions."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
I've got relatives there. Guess I will just email them.
#3
So...how much of this mail is first-class letters, and how much is junk mail that nobody wants anyway? I'm putting my bets on 98% junk mail. And the 2% of letters are mostly bills, I'm guessing.
#2
So You Think You Can Dance. Seriously, this looks like standard car show stuff -- only with modestly clad dancing girls (and guy) instead of evening-gowned models.
#3
Seems to me a handful of engineers created the Tesla at an insignificant cost, and that the Tesla would hand the Volt its own a$$ hands down in almost every respect.
#10
Just remember who paid for this Crap, El Floppo, Chevy, also called GM for Government Motors.
Hell I could build an Electric Vehicle, the engineering dates back before the Gasoline Car.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/15/2009 13:09 Comments ||
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#11
The Tesla also costs $110,000. I recently bought a 35mpg Hwy Chevy compact for less than $12K. So no sale. I rather have that and $105K left in the bank (w/ tax).
As for the dancing girls, marketers study who their target audience is. Half of them have an IQ less than 100.
Posted by: ed ||
12/15/2009 13:54 Comments ||
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#12
Cheesy commercial. Not exactly an advertising triumph.
#13
BTW, while I think the Volt is a good effort, I believe the battery economics is not here yet to support 40mile electric range. Instead a 4-5Kwh battery (w/ option to double it) would give a range of 10-15 miles (20-30 miles) and would cost around half the Volt's price and would benefit even when the gas engine is running (acting as a hybrid car) and get another 30% mpg boost (50% city). Toyota's Prius PHEV is going to own this market.
Posted by: ed ||
12/15/2009 14:42 Comments ||
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#14
As for the dancing girls, marketers study who their target audience is. Half of them have an IQ less than 100
Then I must be in the 90% whose IQ is over 100. ;-)
#16
Don't be distracted by the dancing girls. Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Chrysler LLC, now known as Old Carco LLC, filed a reorganization plan, giving nothing back to the U.S. for its loans under the Troubled Asset Relief Program while repaying some secured lenders in full.
The rough outline of a Chapter 11 plan, filed in Manhattan bankruptcy court today, says the U.S. wonÂ’t recover anything from its $4 billion TARP loan.
#17
says the U.S. wonÂ’t recover anything from its $4 billion TARP loan.
So Anguper are you saying that the taxpayers had done to them what this commercial is implying.
[Straits Times] THE Philippines ordered the evacuation on Monday of thousands of people living near the most active volcano in the country, warning of a possible eruption within a week. Mayon volcano, known for its near-perfect cone shape in the central Philippines, has been spewing lava and ashes that reached a height of about 100m on Monday, chief vulcanologist Renato Solidum said.
Forecast: Ash and magma, with global cooling to come.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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I assume that the people of the Phillipines are purchasing carbon offsets like crazy to compensate the world for this carbon-spewing monster!
[Maghrebia] Maghreb leaders are re-thinking how bureaucrats and entrepreneurs can work together in a post-crisis global economy riddled with pitfalls, according to participants in a December 11th-12th forum held outside Tunis.
The Arab Institute of Entrepreneurs organised the event, called Enterprise Days, in the coastal city of Sousse, 150km from Tunisia's capital. Participants from Tunisia, Morocco, Europe and the wider Arab world cast a critical eye on the relationship between the state and private enterprise, particularly in the wake of the global financial crisis.
"Absolute liberalism, which gives the market free rein, without regulation, and which rejects any state role, has become widely debatable and is likely to be abandoned," Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi said during his opening address at the forum.
Ghannouchi also proposed "exceptional" programmes to help emerging economies that have been slammed by the global downturn. Under such programmes, global financial institutions and major economic conglomerates would offer those countries additional financing on easy terms.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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[Al Arabiya Latest] Abu Dhabi stepped in to help fellow United Arab Emirates member Dubai with a $10 billion injection, of which $4.1 billion was allocated to troubled state-owned conglomerate Dubai World to pay immediate obligations, Dubai said on Monday, as the UAE central bank said it would support local banks.
The move was the least expected of all options Dubai had on the table after requesting a standstill on $26 billion in Dubai World debt on Nov. 25, alarming markets and shaking the image of the emirate as a regional business hub.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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good job emirates! do let those freaks (Dubai World) get out of control again!
[Bangla Daily Star] A man jumped from the third floor of a residential hotel and died on the spot during a Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) drive early yesterday.
The deceased was identified as Anwar Hossain, 28, an alleged sex-workers' agent in the hotel
The deceased was identified as Anwar Hossain, 28, an alleged sex-workers' agent in the hotel, Lodge Inn, at Kakoli in Gulshan.
Officer-in-charge (OC) Kamal Uddin of Gulshan Police Station said Anwar jumped to the rail lines behind the hotel and died on the spot while a team of Rab-1 was conducting drives at the hotel and another one, Dhaka Inn, adjacent to it around 1:00am.
The Rab team, on a tip off, raided the hotels and arrested 12 men and nine women allegedly involved in unsocial activities there.
Unsocial activities are what the Rab hate the most. Except for the Biplobi communists, who are entirely too social...
The OC said on information they recovered Anwar's body from the rail lines and sent it to Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue for autopsy.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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Well, this is a change for the RAB! It's the right time, and the right sort of raid. But no rounds of bullet? And defenestration as a method? Someone's getting creative, or maybe they got the memo about fewer crossfires needed.
#1
Do you know what is the difference between a servant and a slave? A slave doesn't have the right to defend himself or his family. If a slave's daughter or wife is raped or beaten, there is nothing he can do to protect them.
Apparently it is not enough that we have become servants of the state. They want us to be slaves.
(CNNMoney.com) -- A lot of Americans will be cutting back on spending for their families and others this holiday season, and will be more practical with the gifts they give, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Monday.
According to the poll, 49% of those surveyed said they'll spend less on holiday gifts this year than they did last year. Another 39% said they'll spend at 2008 levels, while 12% indicated they'll spend more.
The poll also found that 51% of those surveyed will cut back in what they'll make in charitable contributions due to economic conditions this year, while 44% said the economy will have no impact on their giving.
There may not be a lot of extravagances under the tree or menorah this season. The CNN poll found that 68% of those surveyed will be buying gifts that people need, compared to 27% who will be purchasing gifts that people might enjoy and 4% who play to buy both practical and fun gifts.
But a majority of Americans do have holiday spirit. The poll found that 59% of those polled do not believe economic conditions will make this season more stressful, compared to 40% who do.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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While banks were enduring a severe financial downturn, they absorbed billions of dollars in drugs money, says Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Costa told the Observer that drugs money "saved banks from collapse" at the height of the global financial crisis, the Daily Mail reported on Sunday.
The head of the UNODC said there were signs that some banks were rescued by billions of dollars that "originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities".
Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa referred to the problem faced by many banks in the second half of 2008, as they were no longer able to lend each other.
"The system was basically paralyzed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another," he told the newspaper.
Analysts maintain that following the collapse of US lender Lehman Brothers in September 2008, the inter-bank market system was also paralyzed and no longer could keep the constant flow of liquidity to the banks. This, they claim, paved the way for banks to absorb drugs money that came to the salvage of some of the banks.
Costa noted there were evidence supporting the idea that the proceeds of organized crime were the "only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the verge of collapse last year.
The United Nations estimates that the international drug barons and cartels rake in more than $300 billion annually. Costa said a majority of this money generated from drugs profits is absorbed into the economics system, effectively laundering it.
A British Bankers' Association spokesman, reacting to the UN report on drugs money, told the Observer, "We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind."
"There was a clear lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks."
The UN drugs and crime chief said that the problem came to his attention around 18 months ago and that he was not going to mention the names of the banks involved in absorbing the drug money.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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A UN spokeman said it; therefore it must be true [sarc].
EXPERTS on prehistoric man are rethinking their dates after a find in a southern French valley suggested our ancestors may have reached Europe 1.57 million years ago - 200,000 years earlier than we thought.
What provoked the recount was a pile of fossilised bones and teeth uncovered 15 years ago by local man Jean Rouvier in a basalt quarry at Lezignan la Cebe, in the Herault valley, Languedoc.
In the summer of 2008, Mr Rouvier mentioned his find to Jerome Ivorra, an archaeological researcher at France's National Centre for Scientific Research.
The subsequent dig uncovered a large variety of ancient animal bones: cattle, deer, horses and also of carnivorous animals related to cats and dogs.
More importantly however, about 10m down and under the basalt layer, the team found 20 or so tools, most of which bore traces of use.
The surprise came when argon dating showed the site went back 1.57 million years - substantially older than many other prehistoric sites - according to a paper published in the specialist journal, Comptes Rendus Palevol.
It is older, for example, than the Spanish site at Atapuerca, which dates back a mere 1.2 to 1.1 million years.
And as the paper pointed out, the existence of such manmade objects in Europe was extremely rare in this period.
In comparison, the first such tools in East Africa date back to 2.5 million years ago, while human settlements in the Transcaucasia region date back to a 1.8 million years ago.
"A discovery as rich as the one in the Herault Valley offers a real opportunity to better understand the Europe of this period,'' the CNRS said.
More digs were planned for 2010 to discover more about the site.
In Copenhagen, the policy of seeking a rapid response to climate change. One of their problems is the scientists, because they stir up the anxiety and interfere too much in the political debate. This threatens one of the greatest achievements of civilization: democracy. A German article from Die Welt, a conservative German daily (and one of the few papers with critical articles on the climate change hysteria.
Thank you, European Conservative. We rely on our foreign Rantburgers for this kind of thing as well as their personal perspective, enhancing Rantburg for us all. :-)
Posted by: European Conservative ||
12/15/2009 00:23 ||
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If you don't mind, I'll (sometimes) post more of interesting articles. Google Translate is pretty good nowadays.
The most stupid thing that has been said about "climate change" was Al Gore's "The debate is over."
I get very nervous when somebody says that. I also find it strange how Little Green Footballs (which I used to read a lot) has suddenly mutated into a Global Warming Alarmist blog that bans everyone who dares to voice dissent.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
12/15/2009 18:26 Comments ||
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Toyota Motor will begin selling "affordable" plug-in hybrid cars in 2011, upping the ante on General Motors and Nissan Motor as they aim to take the lead in the field of rechargeable cars.
Toyota's first plug-in model, the Prius Plug-In Hybrid (PHV), will add an external charging function and more batteries to the popular Prius to enable longer-distance driving on electricity alone.
Because it can also run on gasoline, plug-in hybrids--such as GM's upcoming Volt due for sale next year--eliminate the "range anxiety" seen as one of the main shortcomings of battery-powered pure electric cars.
The Prius PHV can travel 14.5 miles using only the electric motor, making a short commute possible on zero emissions, Toyota said. On a full charge and full tank of gas, the car could theoretically travel 870 miles, it said.
Toyota, the world's biggest automaker and by far the top seller of gasoline-electric hybrid cars, said it would aim to sell "several tens of thousands" of plug-in hybrid cars to the general public in an "affordable" price range.
Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's R&D chief and father of the original Prius, declined to specify a price range but indicated it would likely be far cheaper than 3 million yen ($33,770).
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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Wanna bet EPA will find a reason to block them?
#5
Good catch. Interesting seeing this article after writing about the Prius Plugin in the Volt thread. More at Green Car Congress. Gasoline fuel efficiency - 72 mpg US.
Posted by: ed ||
12/15/2009 16:31 Comments ||
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I just want access to batteries. I could care less about the cars.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
12/15/2009 19:20 Comments ||
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As the Copenhagen climate talks enter their final phase, President Obama and 115 other world leaders are attempting to impose drastic carbon dioxide reductions on developed nations and to transfer billions of dollars to Third World countries to help them do the same, based entirely on highly suspect computer models.
Dr. Vincent Gray, who resigned from the Royal Society of New Zealand to protest the inaccuracies in a report on climate change it issued on July 12, minced no words when he called the entire global warming scenario "an orchestrated litany of lies":
"As an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for eighteen years, that is to say, from the very beginning. I have submitted thousands of comments to all of the Reports. My comments on the Fourth IPCC Report, all 1,898 of them, are to be found at IPCC (2007) and my opinions of the IPCC are in Gray (2008b)
"I am therefore very familiar with the arguments presented by the IPCC, many of which have now been copied by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and the responses to them....
The globe is warming
"This statement is a lie. The globe is currently cooling. According to the CSSP Report (Karl et al 2007), there are currently nine authorities currently involved in providing a dataset of monthly global temperature anomalies. They are:
NOAA's National Climate Data Center (NCDC, GHCN-COADS)
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v)
NOAA radiosonde network , (RATPAC)
Hadley Centre Radiosonde Network (HadAT2)
University of Alabama Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (UAH )
Remote Sensing Systems Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (RSS)
National Center for Environmental Protection Reanalysis (NCEP50)
European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis (ERA40)
"Eight of these authorities agree that the globe is currently cooling. Only GISS disagrees.
because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions
"No evidence is presented to justify this conclusion. There are "projections" of computer models but these are not predictions, they are merely the results of assumptions made in the model. No "projected" result has ever been successfully related to an actual change in the climate.
Measurements show that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are well above levels seen for many thousands of years.
"This statement is a lie. 90,000 measurements published in peer-reviewed journals since 1850, some by Nobel Prize-winners, have been suppressed by the IPCC because they do not agree with this statement. (Beck 2007). Stability of carbon dioxide in ice cores thousands of years old is questionable. (Jaworowski 2007). Recent measurements of carbon dioxide are confined only to exceptional circumstances over the ocean, and do not include measurements over land. (Manning et al 1994).
Further global climate changes are predicted
"This is another lie. Computer models of the climate have never been shown to be capable of prediction, and the IPCC recognises this by using the term "projections" for the output from the models. This statement refers only to greenhouse gas concentrations anyway, not to any other 'global climate change.'"
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2009 00:00 ||
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A murky tale of nuclear secrets, kidnapping, defections and political skulduggery is stoking tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and fuelling decades-old mistrust and hostility between Tehran and Washington.
The lead character is a little-known Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, who vanished mysteriously during a pilgrimage to Mecca in June.
Iran claimed this week that he was one of 11 Iranians being held "illegally" by the United States or other countries at Washington's behest while it seeks their extradition.
According to some reports, Iran hopes to secure their return in exchange for three US hikers detained in a notorious Tehran prison since they strayed over the country's northern border with Iraq in July.
The row comes at a delicate time. International attempts to defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis are faltering over Tehran's reluctance to accept a confidence-building measure it had tentatively agreed to in October. Decision-making in Tehran has been seemingly paralysed by unprecedented rifts in the Iranian leadership, spawned by president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in June.
It took Tehran three months to break the news of Mr Amiri's disappearance. Embarrassed by Arab and Iranian media speculation that a scientist working on its disputed nuclear programme had defected with damaging information, Tehran at the time described Mr Amiri only as a "pilgrim" or an "Iranian citizen".
That all changed this week when Tehran acknowledged for the first time that Mr Amiri was a nuclear scientist, and went on the attack.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Straits Times] THE Philippines ordered the evacuation on Monday of thousands of people living near the most active volcano in the country, warning of a possible eruption within a week. Mayon volcano, known for its near-perfect cone shape in the central Philippines, has been spewing lava and ashes that reached a height of about 100m on Monday, chief vulcanologist Renato Solidum said.
