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Truck and SUV sales rising as gas prices drop
[Quote:]
After nearly a year of flagging sales, low gas prices and fat incentives are reigniting America’s taste for big vehicles.
Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December, according to researchers at the automotive Website Edmunds.com, something that hasn’t happened since February.
Meanwhile the forecast finds that sales of hybrid vehicles are expected to be way down.
Tenn. Sludge Spill Challenges ‘Clean Coal’ Future
[Quote:]
When an earthen wall holding back 525 million gallons of ash slurry gave way at the coal-fired Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee in the wee hours of Monday morning, the resultant flood ruined a picturesque rural landscape, inundated more than a dozen houses, and blanketed as much as 400 acres of land with potentially toxic muck.
Fortunately, no one was hurt. And initial tests by officials at the Tennessee Valley Authority suggest the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers, major sources of drinking water for the denizens of Knoxville, Tenn., escaped major contamination.
But the mud has done much more than just sully a countryside. Americans’ energy consumption habits are a top-tier political issue, and as we look for new ways to curtail global warming, wean ourselves from oil, and find sources of clean energy, coal’s role is still unclear.
So the accident raises a serious question: Is there such a thing as “clean coal”?
No. Next question.
Clean Coal only exists in coal-plant advertising, and the fact that discovery.com feels it is a “serious question” is very worrying.
Coleman
“Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed,” Coleman said Wednesday at a news conference. He noted Franken could opt to waive the recount.
“It’s up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct,” Coleman said, telling reporters he would “step back” if he were in Franken’s position. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the recount would cost 3 cents per ballot, or almost $90,000.
[But now that he's actually in that position:]
The state Supreme Court unanimously denied Coleman’s request for a temporary restraining order to block the votes, which the Republican senator’s campaign contended were duplicates that mostly favored Democratic rival Al Franken. The court upheld the state Canvassing Board’s ruling on the matter.
The court’s decision leaves Coleman with fewer ways to make up ground in the recount, in which he now trails Franken by 47 votes. But Associate Justice Alan Page made it clear the issue of duplicate ballots was unresolved and said the court’s ruling was not binding in a future lawsuit.
Coleman’s attorneys, who said the campaign was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, added that it virtually guaranteed the recount would end in litigation and delay the seating of a Minnesota senator past Jan. 6, when the next Congress convenes.
Fed Approves GMAC Request to Become a Bank
[Quote:]
Federal regulators will permit the financing arm of General Motors to become a bank and gain access to billions of dollars in government aid, a crucial step that will help ensure the survival of the company.
In a 4 to 1 vote, the Federal Reserve Board approved GMAC’s application to transform itself into a bank holding company “in light of the unusual and exigent circumstances” affecting the financial markets. The move will allow GMAC to tap as much as $6 billion in government bailout money. The approval came as GMAC bondholders were facing a Friday deadline to vote to approve a complex transaction that would significantly reduce the company’s outstanding debt.
What is surprising about this? Americans are the dumbest, most self centered f*cks on the planet who will happily massacre millions while simultaneously voting for the worst possible candidate in history, twice. Nuclear armed exceptionalism, narcissism, and avarice. Pray this nation I am trapped in either implodes completely or gets hit by a meteor or something because short of catastrophe, the U.S. will never change course until it drives everyone off a cliff.
Amen! But would the Chinese be any better? We are bound to find out…
Americans prefer big, comfortable, safe vehicles. I’d like to see those bigger vehicles become more fuel-efficient but CAFE standards will ultimately do what free choice isn’t doing … force Americans to buy more fuel efficient vehicles by eliminating some of their choices. And when did Americans ever “massacre millions”? That’s Europe’s schtick.
I didn’t know Stalin and Mao were European… I think there’s not many continents left that have no “million killed” in their history. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Amin… I don’t have the name of an Aztec leader but they qualify as well. Now that there’s more than a million Iraqi killed since 2003 the USA has joined this illustrious club – or should we count the native americans as well? In that case there’s also the Maori for Australia. Perhaps we should all emigrate to Belgium.
John,
What did the poor Belgians ever do to us for you to threaten them like that?
Maybe the original point of this post was about condemning Americans for their short-sightedness in vehicle choice. A reply added their institutional greed, their electoral blindness (absolutely true), but then, somehow, the condemnation leapt to mass slaughter of millions. So, a few clarifications of the record, as I (and Wikipedia) see it. First, Stalin’s government was most definitely situated in Europe (Moscow is west of the Urals), making him (and the slaughter he invoked) European. Second, it would appear that at least 90 % of the native Americans died of disease. Third, while the number of Iraqis killed by Americans (in a useless war)is most definitely in the tens of thousands, that number is utterly dwarfed by those killed internally by Saddam, or at his direction in a war with Iran. America may have killed over a million Germans and Japanese in WWII, but it seems that then, everybody was busy ‘doin it’. So, Americans have many faults, but none like the Belgians, who killed between 5 and 8 million in the Congo, and started conflicts that have killed that many again, in that Paradise. America, si, Belgium, no.