Tea-tards, they are so easy to size up. You don't see these Glen Beck nuthuggers out protesting trillion dollar military budgets, or the 37 billion increase to homeland security, just workers unions!?!?! They are the gaping asshole of America, shit disturbing hypocrites, who only care about big government when its doing something half decent.

Tea party groups plan Wisconsin rally

MADISON (WKOW) -- Conservative tea party groups are planning their own rallies Saturday in Madison.

Massive rallies for four straight days have shut down the capitol square in Madison.  Demonstrators are protesting Gov. Scott Walker's budget repair bill that would strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Walker, a tea party favorite, says the changes are needed to help balance the state's budget.

Tea party groups planning the Saturday rally issued a statement saying Wisconsin's elected officials need to keep their promises to cut spending.

Madison police spokesman Joel DeSpain says he expects the tea party rally to

FROM YAHOO NEWS

World Bank: Food prices at "dangerous levels"

ST. LOUIS – Global food prices have hit "dangerous levels" that could contribute to political instability, push millions of people into poverty and raise the cost of groceries, according to a new report from the World Bank.

The bank released a report Tuesday that said global food prices have jumped 29 percent in the past year, and are just 3 percent below the all-time peak hit in 2008. Bank President Robert Zoellick said the rising prices have hit people hardest in the developing world because they spend as much as half their income on food.

"Food prices are the key and major challenge facing many developing countries today," Zoellick said. The World Bank estimates higher prices for corn, wheat and oil have pushed 44 million people into extreme poverty since last June.

The report comes a day before Finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of 20 leading economies meet in Paris. Zoellick said he's worried some countries might react to food inflation by banning exports or implementing price controls, which would just aggravate the problem.

The World Bank's food price index rose by 15 percent between October and January alone. The increase has been driven by volatile global trading in wheat, corn and soybeans. Global corn futures more than doubled since this summer, from $3.50 to $7 a bushel, in part because of higher demand from developing countries and a growing biofuels industry.

Prices are rising in part because global grain traders have gotten jittery about historically low reserve levels of corn, wheat and soybeans, said Chris Nagel, an analyst with Northstar Commodity in Minneapolis. Growing demand from customers in China and elsewhere is putting pressure on the supply of most commodities, he said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted last week U.S. corn farmers will have just 675 million bushels of corn at the end of August, before next year's harvest begins. That's just an 18-day supply, Nagel said.

The slim reserves mean traders will likely bid up crop prices further at any weather event that reduces next year's planting.


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FROM THE GLOBE AND MAIL

When jails become a jobs program

ALSO SEE: BILL TO ABOLISH EARLY PAROLE PASSES COMMONS

Should the country's biggest job-creation program really be that of the Correctional Service of Canada? The jails plan to hire 5,000 new employees, according to Don Head, the commissioner. He says the service is trying to count up the costs of the government's multiple crime bills. Did no one think to do that first?


Even apart from all those jobs is the cost of the new infrastructure needed to house a spike in the number of prisoners. Canadians may be asked to pay billions of dollars more each year. Yet the Conservative government has provided no comprehensive costing, and none for a new bill, Bill S-10, that provides for mandatory-minimum sentences for some drug crimes, such as six months for growing six or more marijuana plants.

The costs of crime bills such as S-10 are at the heart of a dispute between the government and the opposition. The House finance committee is asking for government cost estimates. Liberal finance critic Scott Brison asked Speaker Peter Milliken last Friday to find the government in contempt of Parliament for not providing those estimates. The government claims the costs are a “cabinet confidence.”

Its position is untenable. This is a government that stresses fiscal rectitude and the promotion of financial literacy. Why should Canadians be told to ask more informed questions about private investment or borrowings, on the one hand, and give the government a blank cheque on the other?

Given a tab potentially in the billions, it is hard to see what social need drives such spending. Nearly half the country disregards the law on marijuana use, according to the government's own statistics. This should tell the government there is no appetite for stiffer penalties. Overall, 44.5 per cent of Canadians said in 2004 that they have used marijuana at least once; while 14.1 per cent reported using marijuana in the previous 12 months (up from 7.4 per cent in 1994), 45.7 per cent of users reported using it just twice or less in the past three months. Few Canadians spend much time worrying about cannabis.


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FROM the Telegraph

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg to meet Barack Obama

Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg will be among the Silicon Valley executives at a private meeting with Barack Obama later today, according to reports.

The US President is flying to the West Coast this afternoon to discuss his budget and technology policy plans with business leaders including the Apple, Google and Facebook CEOs.

"The President and the business leaders will discuss our shared goal of promoting American innovation, and discuss his commitment to new investments in research and development, education and clean energy,” the White House said.

News of Jobs' attendance comes less than 24 hours after unverified claims by a US celebrity gossip magazine that his health has sharply detriorated. The 55-year-old, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and received a liver transplant in 2009, has been on medical leave from Apple since mid-January.

He was photographed entering a cancer clinic in Palo Alto, close to his firm's headquarters in Cupertino.

The Obama adminstration has close ties to Silicon Valley, especially to Google, with many of the firm's former employees in policy roles.

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Biggest solar flare in years set to blast Earth's atmosphere; could impact GPS, power grids


A massive solar flare could make for a beautiful night for people in the northern United States - provided it doesn't knock the lights out.

The blast of charged particles unleashed from the sun earlier this week has been peppering the Earth over the last few days, but it's biggest punch is expected to hit the Earth's atmosphere on Thursday.

Monday's eruption, considered an X-class flare, is the biggest solar flare in four years. It is already being blamed for disrupting radio communication in China, and could potentially affect power grids and satellite communication around the globe.

However, for the United States, the most likely outcome from this latest space storm could be a colorful night sky over New England and even parts of New York State.

"It won't hit us dead-on," physicist Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, told National Geographic.

The moon may make it difficult to see, but stargazers may be able to catch a reddish glow among the stars.

"X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms," NASA said on Tuesday.

The China Meteorological Administration reported that Monday's solar flare caused "sudden ionospheric disturbances" in the atmosphere above China and jammed short-wave radio communications in the southern part of the country.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/02/17/2011-02-17_solar_flares_could_dazzle_ny_sky.html#ixzz1EFO4brQM

Detroit RoboCop statue is GO


By Helen A.S. Popkin

Less than 10 days after launching, the "Detroit Needs a Statue of RoboCop" campaign reached its $50,000 goal via the project fundraising website Kickstarter. One source matched the $25,000 raised by more than 1,000 individual contributors, assuring the future of this half-cop, half-machine, all-statue commemoration of the 1987 sci-fi movie starring Peter Weller.

Days earlier, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing put the kibosh on the original suggestion submitted to the city’s Internet campaign seeking ideas to help revitalize the ailing Motor City. "There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop," Bing tweeted (on Twitter).

For Detroit resident John Leonard, Mayor Bing’s tweet was a call to action. His "Build a statue of Robocop in Detroit" Facebook page led to the "Detroit Needs A Statue of Robocop" Kickstarter project, helmed by Imagination Station. The nonprofit group charged with cleaning up Detroit’s blighted areas pledged Roosevelt Park as the Robocop statue’s future beat, where he will follow his prime directive to "serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the awesome."

Kickstarter is a fundraising platform for independent profit and non-profit projects to which anyone can contribute as little as $1 or as much as they want. As with "Detroit Needs A Robocop Statue," a project is posted on the site, with a goal amount to be raised. Contributors lock in their donations via Amazon.com or other payment means, but aren’t charged until all the money is raised and the project goes through.


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