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Short Streaming Video of VP Sarah Palin recently supporting an independent Third Party (conservative) in Alaska, welcoming the Party and sharing their ideas, also supporting independent parties' to challenge the two established parties.The Party welcomed here on this video did in fact go on to have a successful convention, as Mrs. Palin urged them, and ultimately officially endorsed and affiliated with conservative CHUCK BALDWIN (on the national ticket for Constitution Party) for President of the United States in 2008.

New York - White House hopeful Senator John McCain expressed concern on Thursday over DHL's proposal to hire United Parcel Service Inc to fly its packages nationwide, as it violates laws intended to encourage market competition.

'India's GDP to grow at 9.5% in FY 09' Mumbai, June 16: India's real GDP is expected to grow at an impressive 9.5 per cent in FY 09, the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) said in its monthly review in Mumbai. The Indian Economy is heading towards the fourth consecutive year of an over-9 per cent growth and like in the last five years, growth this year too was expected to be driven by capital investments happening in India, CMIE said. As per CMIE CapEx Service, projects worth Rs 3.4 lakh-crore are scheduled for commissioning in FY 09. This...

Bo (woof) In Commentary: That is one hot dancer, and I ain’t talkin’ about the 50+ year old Olivia Newton John wanna be in this video, but I don’t see what all the excitement is about. C’mon I dance with my mother too. Admittedly she only knows how to do the Chicken Dance but we nail the routine every time.......http://boknowsonline.com/2008/01/11/this-is-not-what-i-want/

Cheeseheads don't need to be bleu: Experts say predictions that California will soon overtake Wisconsin as the nation's top cheese producer are unlikely to come true. The Golden State and its happy cows gained quickly on Wisconsin in the past decade, but plants in California are maxing out, while efforts to boost production in Wisconsin are paying off, said Dick Groves, longtime owner of the Madison-based trade publication, Cheese Reporter. Groves helped spark the friendly competition between the states 10 years ago with an editorial predicting California would overtake Wisconsin in cheese production by 2005. He later amended it to...

SAN FRANCISCO - Marine biologists studying wild octopuses have found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subterfuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex. The new study by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, who journeyed off the coast of Indonesia found that wild octopuses are far from the shy, unromantic loners their captive brethren appear to be. The scientists watched the Abdopus aculeatus octopus, which are the size of an orange, for several weeks and published their findings recently in the journal Marine Biology. They witnessed picky, macho males carefully select a mate, then guard their newly domesticated digs...

Menopause Is An Adaptation To Minimize Reproductive Competition Between Females In A Family, Research Suggests Three generations of women. New research suggests that menopause is an adaptation to minimize reproductive competition between generations of females in the same family unit. (Credit: iStockphoto/John Prescott)ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Insight into why females of some species undergo menopause while others do not has proven elusive despite an understanding of the biological mechanisms behind the change. However, new research by scientists at the Universities of Cambridge and Exeter suggests that menopause is an adaptation to minimize reproductive competition between generations of females in...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Chris Collier has been a patient of Dr. Dave Rummel for 30 years. When it comes to teeth, Collier is more concerned about his health than his smile. "The reason I come here is because I know I can trust the dentist I have," Collier said. "I know I can get good workmanship." SLIDESHOW: Images From Report Rummel is one of the few dentists in central Ohio who makes his own crowns, bridges and dentures, but most other dentists rely on outside dental labs, 10 Investigates' Lindsey Seavert reported. The labs can be down the street or...

Rueban Navarrette shows mendacious dexterity in appropriating the language of competitive economics to support an agenda that has nothing to do with improving the economy of the United States. He understands well that competition fosters excellence, but seems to deliberately elide the fact that it also reveals hard truths about the people who lose. Anyone who lays into the Democrats with a quarterstaff for being anti-competitive will usually get my seal of approval. In Navarrette’s case, I withhold my utterly unimportant benediction. He got one or two points correct, but failed to tell the whole story. I’ll do my best...

Sounds like the United Football League is going to happen in 2009. Prospective UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue told agents the other day it will be an eight-team league (he said six owners, including Mark Cuban, are already in place), beginning in August 2009. The details were sketchy from there, but some agents reported that the minimum salary would be $75,000, the league would go after existing NFL personnel people and assistant coaches to be the league's GMs and head coaches, and the league would try to sign some of the 30th through 43rd players on NFL rosters for slightly more...

China copies Su-27 fighter, may compete with Russia - paper 21/02/2008 12:35 MOSCOW, February 21 (RIA Novosti) - China has built a domestic copy of the famed Su-27 Flanker fighter and may compete with Russia on third-party markets if it sets up the full-scale production of the plane, a Russian daily said on Thursday. China has acquired 76 Su-27SK fighters from Russia since 1992, and bought a license for production of another 200 planes in 1995, in a deal worth $2.5 billion. "Since 1996, the domestic version of the Su-27 aircraft, dubbed J-11, has been produced at the Shenyang Aircraft...

Countering the rancour in the West against outsourcing of jobs, the chairman of IT major Wipro [Get Quote] has said India was not stealing their jobs and its businesses were moving into developed countries, which did not have enough skilled graduates to compete in the global economy. "What is of concern is how serious a shortage of technical talent is building up in the western world. Global companies are going to where not enough young boys and girls are getting into math, science and engineering. That trend is not being reversed," Azim Premji said. Premji said that as Wipro expands...

Much of the money we are spending on oil is being used to fund [jihad]..We are financing a war against ourselves, and the way things are going, we will soon be paying the enemy more than we are paying our own military. In light of this, a top priority of U.S. national security policy should be to break the oil cartel... What is needed is for the Congress to pass a law requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fueled - able to run on any combination of alcohol or gasoline fuel. Such cars are existing...

New York Post BATTLING FOR BOYS By MARTY NEMKO January 24, 2008 -- IN the early 1980s, men and women earned an equal proportion of college degrees. Today, however, women attain 135 degrees for every 100 that men do, the National Center for Education Statistics recently reported. By 2016, it'll be 162 to 100. Since good jobs increasingly require a degree, that disparity portends disaster for men. And a disaster for half our population is a disaster for everyone. Why the lack of male college graduates? One main reason is that K-12 education has been made girl-friendly at the expense...

When scientists found out that chimps had better memories than students, there were unkind comments about the calibre of the human competition they faced. But now an ape has gone one better, trouncing British memory champion Ben Pridmore. Ayumu, a seven-year-old male brought up in captivity in Japan, did three times as well as Mr Pridmore at a computer game which involved remembering the position of numbers on a screen. And that's no mean feat - the 30-year-old accountant from Derby is capable of memorising the order of a shuffled pack of cards in under 30 seconds.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, Jan. 18, 2008 – More than 190 Afghan National Army commandos from 203rd Corps vied for the right to be crowned the "best of the best" during a competition Jan. 10-11 at a combined military outpost in Khowst province. Afghan National Army commandos apply makeshift tourniquets using cravats and a weapons magazine to demonstrate medical self aid during a Best Commando Competition on Jan. 10, 2008, at a combined military outpost in Khowst province, Afghanistan. The friendly competition pitted more than 190 commandos from the Afghan National Army’s 203rd Corps against each other. U.S. Army...

Competition is as American as apple pie. It announces American individualism and marks the American market economy with its characteristic rivalries. Not just for neoliberals such as Milton Friedman and ­quasi-­anarchists such as philosopher Robert Nozick, but for Americans of all political stripes, it reflects a distrust of the “government and co-operation” dear to cultural critic John Ruskin. We are a nation of winners (and, yes, losers) where, in the wonderfully perverse turn of phrase often attributed to one of America’s “winningest” coaches, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Yet we need not be readers of Ruskin to know...

Starting at 7:00 p.m. tonight CNN is re-playing both of last night's debates that were produced and broadcast by ABC. Meanwhile, Fox's Republican Presidential Forum is scheduled to begin at 8:00 p.m.

Push for higher gas tax could follow chief's death The death of Ric Williamson, the fiery, whip-smart chairman of the state transportation commission, could upend the still-roiling debate over toll roads in Texas in the new year. Mr. Williamson died Saturday of a heart attack at age 55, sending shock waves through the nearly 15,000-employee department he led as well as the political and policy circles where his combative style and pro-toll-road agenda had engendered enormous change – and criticism. Always careful to credit Gov. Rick Perry, a close friend and former roommate, Mr. Williamson emerged as a lightning rod...

GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS OF AMERICA by: Heyecan Veziroglu, December 20, 2007 At the Independent Women’s Forum at the Marriot on December 5, 2007, panelists from business and academic circles identified the most significant challenges facing America and suggested rational, free-market policies to enhance U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. “Government shouldn’t keep its old-fashioned forms,” said Dr. Elaine Kamarck from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. “In our era, governments talk about citizens as customers.” “Today, we’ve reinvented government. Social security system is an example of reinvented efficient bureaucracy,” she argued. “Productivity is brought to government services.” “The old-fashioned bureaucracy...

CAMP RAMADI — Practice makes perfect, and the Iraqi Army (IA) Soldiers are moving along the right path towards perfecting their Soldiering skills. The Soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division, competed in a “Best Squads Competition”, Nov. 28, at Camp Ramadi. The competition, held quarterly, pitted five teams of Soldiers against one another in common Soldiers tasks and skills. Staff Sgt. Johnathan Lloyd, 1-7 IA Bde., military transition team (MiTT), said that Iraqi Soldiers used to be taught by the MiTT troops, but now the Iraqi troops are training themselves. “When we got here ten months ago,...

...We are a country obsessed with consumption, which would be fine if we seemed to be fulfilled getting bigger TVs but having less time to watch them. But, in the aggregate, that's not the case. "The things that we get used to most easily and then take for granted are our material possessions -- our car, our house," writes Layard. "But there is lots of evidence that people underestimate the process of habituation." The amount of happiness we think we'll get from a new house, and the amount of happiness we actually get from a new house, are not the...

Tuesday, 30 October 2007, 11:55 GMT Blood findings bring malaria hope Researchers could be a step closer to a cure for malaria after discovering people with blood group O are naturally protected from its most severe forms. Edinburgh University has found blood type O people are significantly less likely to experience the most life-threatening effects of malaria. It is hoped the discovery will help develop drugs which mimic the properties of red cells. Red cells in O group blood prevent malaria worsening. "We may be able to reduce the number of children dying from severe malaria in sub-Saharan Africa"Dr...

Nasty effects of China syndromeMick Hume: Notebook Did somebody declare war on the Chinese without telling us? To judge by the news it would appear they are now to blame for everything, as revived fears of the “yellow peril” spread faster than Made in China labels. If we believe what we are told, the Chinese are sending over lead-painted toys to poison our children, hacking into top-level military computers on both sides of the Atlantic and burning coal to destroy the planet. It is enough to make you wonder why that Terracotta Army is really coming to London. Obviously, we...

Judges grade food prepared for the Iron Chef competition Aug. 16 at Forward Operating Base Hammer. Photo by Sgt. Natalie Rostek, 3rd HBCT Public Affairs. FORWARD OPERATING BASE HAMMER — Food service personnel of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team took part in the Sledgehammer version of the Iron Chef competition Aug. 16 at FOB Hammer. The idea came from the 3rd HBCT Food Service officer-in-charge, Chief Warrant Officer Ellen Magras, a Virgin Islands native, to honor the food service personnel with an Appreciation Day. “I wanted to honor all the food service professionals, past, present, and future,� she said....

A group from Mexico has won the Stockholm Junior Water Prize at World Water Week, which is being held here for the 17th year. Adriana Alcántara Ruiz, Dalia Graciela Díaz Gómez and Carlos Hernández Mejía received the prize from Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria. The Mexican team has found a way to absorb lead in industrial waste water with the help of eggshells.

FORT HUACHUCA — On television one can watch ultimate fighting, a competition of mixed martial arts. The Army has its combative training, also a combination of mixed martial arts. While the TV fights are designed to entertain, the Army’s goal is different. The Army system involves training for a life-or-death situation between two people, said Oscar Moore, the combative instructor for the 304th Military Intelligence Battalion. “I can detain someone, or I can kill that person,” Moore said Monday. As he spoke, some soldiers were practicing the various fighting techniques — a collage of boxing, Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, judo,...

DETROIT --- DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group on Thursday launched a lifetime warranty on major "powertrain" vehicle components, such as engines and transmissions, as it seeks to give consumers another reason to visit its showrooms. Chrysler Sales Chief Steven Landry said during a conference call that the warranty is an "unprecedented" offer in the industry and it promises to "raise the consideration" of Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles in the marketplace. Mr. Landry said the offer could eventually allow Chrysler to lessen its reliance on high-dollar discounts and rebates as a way to lure new buyers. "We don't want to match...

Social Networking Class War: MySpace Vs. Facebook Claire Cain Miller 07.23.07, 6:00 AM ET A flurry of recent articles have observed that young people are leaving MySpace for Facebook in droves, setting off speculation that MySpace is becoming the latest victim of fickle teens following the hot new thing. Not so, says University of California, Berkeley, researcher Danah Boyd. Not all teens are leaving MySpace, she wrote in a recent essay--instead, they're splitting up along class lines. Boyd confirms what teens in any high school across the country already know: Affluent kids from educated, well-to-do families have been fleeing MySpace...

Competition: After Boeing unveiled its new 787 Dreamliner, rival Airbus did the noble thing: It congratulated the U.S. jet maker. If Airbus really wants to be noble, however, it should give up its government subsidies.

Are consumers better off with a competitive or monopolistic provision of goods and services? Let's apply that question to a few areas of our lives. Prior to deregulation, when there was a monopoly and restricted entry in the provision of telephone services, were consumers better off or worse off than they are with today's ruthless competition to get our business? Anyone over 40 will recognize the differences. Competition has provided consumers with a vast array of choices, lower and lower prices and more courteous customer care than when government had its heavy hand on the provision of telephone services.

Why teens have a tough time finding summer work Many are enrolling in summer classes or doing community service while others are squeezed out by adults competing for the same entry-level jobs. By Mark Trumbull | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Boston - This summer is shaping up as a tough one for many of America's youngest job seekers. Camps still need counselors. Ice cream shops still need young arms with a knack for alternating between a scoop and a cash register. And the nation's job market is strong. Yet teen employment rates haven't rebounded from the recession...

The results of the 2007 edition of IMD’s World Competitiveness Yearbook highlight a big shake-up in economic and business power. Emerging nations are quickly catching up in competitiveness. New companies and new brands are appearing all over the world. They now contest the long-standing competitive supremacy of industrialized nations. “This could lead to an increase in protectionist measures in Europe and the US”, says Professor Stéphane Garelli, Director of IMD’s World Competitiveness Center. Of the 55 economies ranked by IMD, the US still ranks No. 1 in 2007, closely followed by Singapore and Hong Kong. However, 40 economies are now...

Panelists on the program Fox News Sunday recently discussed Al Gore's March 21 global warming "planetary emergency" address to Congress, in which Gore urged a freeze on carbon dioxide emissions. At the end of the news summary, a discussion ensued in which Fortune Magazine's Nina Easton explained that several firms in the business community are getting greener and perceive these proposals to be cost saving. She emphasized that Fortune was coming out with material elaborating that theme. Ms. Easton, and most viewers, likely fail to perceive that businesses are illustrating Nobel Prize winning economist George Stigler's 1971 theory of government...

Certificate of need bill to start journey By Travis Fain TELEGRAPH STAFF WRITER ATLANTA - Gov. Sonny Perdue waded deep into one of the most contentious issues of this General Assembly session Thursday - what to do about the state's certificate of need program, which governs hospital expansions. Perdue is backing a bill that would reform the process and ease requirements for surgery centers looking to offer one or a few specific types of surgery as opposed to a full range of procedures available from a hospital. Most legislators said Thursday that they haven't yet read House Bill 568, some...

EDITORIAL Wal-Mart banking bullies The retail giant has been foiled yet again by its enemies, this time in trying to open a bank. March 19, 2007 THE ANTI-WAL-MART lynch mob has prevailed again, forcing the retailer to forgo plans to establish a bank. The mob has become a powerful force, bringing together the company's usual big-labor antagonists, mom-and-pop Main Street merchants and the formidable American Bankers Assn. Recognizing that the company's bid to create a so-called industrial loan company faced a hostile regulatory environment, Wal-Mart on Friday withdrew its 2-year-old application before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. That's a shame....

Commemorating "The Sports Day", seniors from middle schools in Pyongyang participates in "Defense Sports Competition" on Mar. 15 at Kim Il-sung Stadium.

The ERC should give a sharper focus to European research Europe has a new flagship agency to fund the brightest ideas in science. The European Research Council (ERC) has been given a budget of 7.5bn euros (£5bn) to 2013, and will focus solely on fundamental, or "blue skies", study. It is hoped the initiative can find the breakthrough thinking - and eventually new products and services - to keep the EU's economy globally competitive. The ERC was formally inaugurated at a meeting in Berlin attended by the German Chancellor, Dr Angela Merkel. She said the Council would become "a...

For centuries people assumed that economic growth resulted from the interplay between capital and labor. Today we know that these elements are outweighed by a single critical factor: innovation. Innovation is the source of U.S. economic leadership and the foundation for our competitiveness in the global economy. Government investment in research, strong intellectual property laws and efficient capital markets are among the reasons that America has for decades been best at transforming new ideas into successful businesses. The most important factor is our workforce. Scientists and engineers trained in U.S. universities -- the world's best -- have pioneered key technologies...

Among the highest paid corporate executives, only 2.5 percent are women. Among the most elite scientists (those who have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences), fully 9 percent are women. Depending on your biases, you can read that as evidence that women are better at science than business, that corporations discriminate against women, or (if you believe that profit-maximizing corporations get everything just right) that the National Academy discriminates against men. If you have access to the World Wide Web, you'll have no problem finding theories, evidence, counterevidence, and polemics galore on this subject. Here I just want...

Council approves AT&T's broadband infrastructure plan; availability date still uncertain - CONCORD - City leaders have taken a step toward giving Concord residents a third choice for their cable and high-speed Internet -- AT&T. That would be in addition to existing services available through Comcast and Astound Broadband, though AT&T officials aren't saying exactly when the service will be ready.But it does mean that eventually, Concord residents could have their choice of multiple cable providers, when many cities offer only one.City officials approved the infrastructure for the new service, and will debate the actual AT&T contract in the future.Construction crews...

BRUSSELS -- The European Union unveiled an ambitious blueprint for combating global warming and boosting energy efficiency, but key elements of the plan face strong opposition from business interests and could require major battles to get them implemented. The European Commission yesterday published a long-awaited proposal for the bloc's first common energy strategy, a version of which will be discussed at a summit of the EU's 27 national leaders in March. "Europe must lead the world into a new -- or maybe one should say post-industrial -- revolution: the development of a low-carbon economy," said commission President José Manuel Barroso....

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18, 2006 – With the start of the 2007 SemperComm Art Competition, the SemperComm Foundation is challenging all U.S. high school students to stretch their creativity in support of the troops. Caitlin Parker, a Forest Park High School student from Montclair, Va., submitted a multimedia/computer graphics entry entitled, “A Page from History.” Her entry, one of 150 submitted to The SemperComm Foundation’s 2006 SemperComm Art Competition, was selected as the contest’s overall winner. The 2007 contest is open to high school students from across the country. Courtesy photo  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The foundation announced...

NEW YORK - Vonage tanked after its IPO. It's not entirely clear anymore why eBay paid $2.6 billion for Skype. And the long-awaited rollout of advanced TV services based on Internet technologies has resembled the drip of a faucet. It wasn't a banner year for some of the biggest names in Internet Protocol, the technical standard that makes the Web hum. But the technology itself continued to blossom, with newer innovations picking away at every corner of the telecommunications business, from voice to video to wireless. No doubt the main event for 2007 will be the impending smack-down between the...

CHICAGO (AP) - Adam Brent knew his 11-year-run selling best sellers and new releases was over when mail carriers started walking into his building to deliver books from Amazon.com to the tenants upstairs. "Literally, they didn't walk downstairs or take the time to make a phone call," Brent said of the neighbors of Brent Books & Cards in the city's business district. Brent's experience is shared by scores of independent bookstores around the nation that have been knocked out of business by huge chains like Borders Group Inc. (BGP) and Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS), massive retailers like Wal-Mart Stores...

Two weeks ago, European Commissioner of Competition Neelie Kroes arrived in the United States on a mission of economic cooperation. Increasingly, however, that cooperation is hard to find, especially for American firms doing business in Europe. More often than not, the European vision of cooperation is capitulation, with American companies forced to accept onerous conditions or else abandon the European marketplace altogether. Recent history provides a clear view of Europe's "not so competitive" competition policy. Apple recently ran into a buzzsaw in France over iTunes, and other European nations smell blood in the water. The European Union has blocked the...

Time for a new FreeRepublic folding@home thread. Our FreeRepublic team of 358 members comprised primarily of Free Republic members in good standing have banded together to donate their excess CPU cycles to a worthy cause. Via distributed computing, millions of computers around the world, contribute directly to scientific research, in the quest for a greater understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Cancer, and Mad Cow (BSE). Currently, the team is in 75th place (with 1,020 active CPUs - 70,500 completed Work Units and 12.75 million points). This is an entirely voluntary program, and if you want to learn more, please...

Just in response to the New York Times’ smear campaign against Wal-Mart this month, I’d like to say that because I’m in New York for a few months and therefore not within reach of a Wal-Mart, I ended up having to go to K-Mart when I needed to buy a laundry rack. Normally a $10 or $15 item, the only one available was the $35 Martha Stewart version. I had no choice and bought it. On my way to the register I picked up the cheapest nightgown I could find, and a boxed Playtex bra. End of story: $73 Wal-Mart...

Editor’s note: As we went to press, and as if to illustrate the point of the following article, Fortune released its 2006 list of largest corporations, showing Exxon Mobil, not Wal-Mart, on top. For all the gnashing of teeth over the current dominant position of Wal-Mart in the standings among America’s largest corporations, one might think that it has held the top ranking forever. It hasn’t. Wal-Mart has been the top-ranked firm in the Fortune 500 only since 2002. It has been in the top 500 only since 1995. Other corporations have held the top ranking for most of the...

by Mark Finkelstein August 27, 2006 - 06:29 "Comrade. Potato production 70% below target for 4th year in row in five-year plan!" "True, Kommissar. But we have solution. Will implement training and preparation program for workers!" "Budem - let's drink!" The ostensible purpose of this morning's New York Times editorial was to exult at the results of a study finding that 4th-grade charter school students performed worse than their public school counterparts, even when controlling for socio-economic background. Like a tiger on the smallest of mouses, the Times pounced on this one result to proclaim that it was "Exploding the...