Free Republic

Anybody else here have to annual goals identification and assesment as part of their annual review? I was looking at what they want me to enter. The categories are Quality, Growth (company), Profitability (company), and Human Capital/Development. I am a software developer. I write what they tell me to write, so I don't see where I have anything to contribute here, except to the Quality item. The company won't pay for training, so the Human Capital/Development issue is completely out of my hands. The "free" training that is offered is either BS "touchy / feely" crap I don't want or...

Adam Lambert, the American Idol star, outraged viewers of the American Music Awards with an X-rated performance in which he simulated oral sex with a male dancer. Lambert set out to shock with a risque routine which also saw him kissing a male band mate and walking two men in bondage gear across the stage on dog leads. He was singing his new release, For Your Entertainment. After the performance, his first since American Idol, Lambert said: "I'm hoping people were entertained. For those who weren't, maybe I'm not your cup of tea." If the show was to be censored...

Scroll down, on right. Share your opinion! http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/10/30/obama-puts-himself-on-the-line-in-virginia-new-jersey/comments/ Go easy on me if this doesn't look right. It my first time starting a post.

Netbook gravy train starts to slow as euphoria fades Netbook shipments have started cooling after witnessing an explosive surge since late last year as customers started realizing its limits and looking for portable and affordable alternatives for full-size laptops. According to Xia Li, vice-president of Lenovo Group, growth in netbook sales during the second half of this year has slowed as consumers have started becoming more rational in their purchases. "Netbook sales surged in the past as consumers bought the product as gifts or as first laptops," he said. But with consumers starting to realize the limits of the products,...

House Democrats Seek To Block Performance Royalty VoteAugust 3, 2009 Late Friday, a group of 22 House Democrats sent a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other House leaders, urging them not to move a vote on the Performance Royalty to the House floor. In a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn and Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson, the 22 Democratic lawmakers wrote, "At this time, Congress lacks adequate information on the overall impact that this legislation could have on local radio broadcasters and the potential disadvantages to...

How would you rate Obama's job performance so far? Excellent Good Fair Poor AND Has your opinion of him changed over the past few months? Yes, it's improved Yes, it's worsened No

MSNBC may LOVE the Socialist-in-Chief, but hundreds of thousands of their viewers do NOT. Click on the URL, vote, see the results, and forward the link to others.

President Obama revealed what he might think we should be driving when he visited Tesla Motors , a firm building electric cars in San Carlos, California, while on his Tonight Show trip to the Coast. Unlike political rhetoric read from a teleprompter, cars are real. You can touch them and drive them and determine whether or not they're good, bad or indifferent. And the reality is that electric cars don't match the performance of conventional vehicles you're driving now. There's one major shortcoming, which manufacturers never seem to cover in detail, illuminated in a March 26 Silicon Valley Mercury News...

MSNBC has a live poll to grade Obama's performance as President, and we need to get some conservative voice showing up in the results! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093 PLEASE VOTE AND THEN PASS THIS ON!!!

A) 31.5% B) 9.3% C) 7.2% D) 16% F) 36%

Poll to FReep, FReep. 57% give Obama an F @ MSNBC!!! BWAAA HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Frostie performs PERFECTLY in this video dancing to a lively medley of "I’ll Fly Away, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Amazing Grace and I Saw The Light"

All that chocolate might actually help finish the bumper Christmas crossword over the seasonal period. According to Oxford researchers working with colleagues in Norway, chocolate, wine and tea enhance cognitive performance.

Olympic artists angry The Kung Fu pupils in the opening ceremony of the Olympics have spent the last year cooped up in a military camp outside Beijing. Conditions have been bad. "They weren't even given enough food," says their trainer. This news adds to the criticism of the Beijing Organizing Committee. Viewers from around the globe marvelled at the Opening Ceremony last Friday. One of the most spectacular features was the martial arts display by 2008 pupils from the famous Shaolin Centre in Henan province. With coordinated movements, they showed the Tai Chi variant of Kung Fu; a popular way...

For those of you running Vista, and have not set their systems to automatically download updates, I may have some good news for you. Today, my system DLed the SP1 for Vista, (It's large), and after installing and rebooting, many programs that opened/ran sluggishly, now start and perform, the way one would expect they'd run on a less than 1 yr old PC with 2 gigs of RAM.

He told little white lies ... and he took little blue pills. Roger Clemens, whose claims he never took steroids are under federal investigation, has apparently discovered the benefits of another performance-enhancing drug sweeping the sports world - Viagra. Clemens stashed the clearly marked, diamond-shaped pills in a GNC vitamin bottle in his locker at Yankee Stadium, according to a source familiar with the clubhouse, perhaps keeping the drug undercover to avoid the inevitable wisecracks about all the girlfriends he needed to please.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A quarter mile past the finish line in the Kentucky Derby, a gallant runner-up effort by the filly Eight Belles was forgotten in an instant. In a freak accident that one experienced racetrack veterinarian said he had never seen before, the 3-year-old daughter of Unbridled’s Song apparently snapped both of her front ankles simultaneously as she galloped out after the race, sending her crashing hard to the Churchill Downs dirt racetrack. She was euthanized moments later, after vets determined there was no chance to save her. “She had finished the race and was around the turn at...

We could focus on the latest worrisome news in education: the results of an international test released last week that show American 15-year-olds don't know much about science and are falling behind their peers in other industrialized nations. But why get depressed? There is an aluminum foil lining: The test also found that our teens don't let their ignorance bother them. They may not know as much as students in Finland, Canada or New Zealand, but they think they do. When asked to rate their own scientific abilities, they put themselves at the top with their better-educated peers. This is...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30, 2007 – Early reports that credit Iraqi troops for taking the initiative during a Jan. 28 battle with insurgents near Najaf are heartening news, President Bush said during an interview with National Public Radio here yesterday. Bush also told NPR’s Juan Williams that the Iranian government shouldn’t be taking military actions in Iraq that endanger the lives of U.S. servicemembers deployed there. The Najaf battle “is an indication of what is taking place, and that is the Iraqis are beginning to take the lead,” Bush said. The fight involved Iraqi soldiers with U.S. military support engaging...

After two trying months marked by doping allegations, an assault on his reputation and his father-in-law's suicide, Floyd Landis doesn't wish for a stirring comeback so much as the simpler things in life. At this point, he will settle for a good night's sleep, free of pain. To help reach that goal, Landis had hip-replacement surgery last week. With his rehab under way, the 30-year-old American who won this year's Tour de France won't rule out a return to competitive cycling. "Things have been up and down for me," Landis said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'll...

A naked performance artist who says she experienced fantasies of "interspecies metamorphoses" while working with dead pigs has angered British animal rights activists. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized an exhibition where artist Kira O'Reilly sits naked for hours with a dead pig, planned for Friday evening at the Newlyn Art Gallery in Penzance, southwest England.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea has canceled a massive propaganda event because of floods that devastated the country this month, a North Korean diplomat said Saturday. The event known as the "mass games" features thousands of synchronized gymnasts and performers in a stadium where the stands are turned into a giant animated mosaic by children flipping pages of multicolored books. Han Song Ryol, deputy chief of North Korea's mission to the United Nations in New York, told The Associated Press by telephone that the event, which had been set for next month, "has been canceled due to flood damages."...

Mars and Venus in the Classroom By Richard Morin Thursday, May 18, 2006; A02 First the good news: One year with a male English teacher would eliminate nearly a third of the gender gap in reading performance among 13-year-olds. Now the bad: Having a male teacher improves the performance of boys while harming girls' reading skills. On the other hand, a year with a female teacher would close the gender gap in science achievement among 13-year-old girls by half and eliminate the smaller achievement gap in mathematics, says economist Thomas S. Dee of Swarthmore College, who examined data collected from...

Despite all the hoopla about the introduction of Windows Vista, the truth of the matter is that the new OS isn't due for at least another seven to nine months — and it will probably be even longer before most of us start adopting it. Meanwhile, we've still got to deal with Win XP. In order to make the waiting easier, we've decided to assemble the greatest tips in the history of Windows XP. Here you'll find the tips that give you the most bang for your buck; that are most useful in terms of security, functionality, and PC performance;...

Roberts's performance in hearings leaves Democrats with 'dilemma' By Sheryl Gay Stolberg The New York Times FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2005 WASHINGTON U.S. Senate Democrats are deeply conflicted about how to vote on the nomination of Judge John Roberts Jr. to be the 17th chief justice of the United States, and appear divided about how, and whether, to use their vote to send a message to President George W. Bush as he selects a candidate to fill a second Supreme Court vacancy. "That's a critical part of this conversation," Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat and a...

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Hamlet has become a Muslim prince at the Ottoman court in an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy which its Bosnian director says reflects the world after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In possibly the biggest theater co-production the war-torn Balkans region has seen in some 20 years, Haris Pasovic is seeking to put "Hamlet" into a 21st Century setting. "One of the most important issues of the 21st century is the world's increased understanding of the Muslim issue following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York," Pasovic, himself a Bosnian Muslim, told Reuters...

...The CBO projects that the federal government will collect $2.14 trillion this year. That's a hefty 58% increase from a decade ago. Washington may have many problems, but a shortage of money is not among them. All those dollars have not just gone to Iraq. The $286.5 billion highway bill is evidence that Washington is spending record amounts on infrastructure. And there's lots being lavished on all types of capital expenditures. The budget of the Army Corps of Engineers -- the federal agency tasked to help waterproof New Orleans -- is 31% higher today than it was 10 years ago.......

Signaling needs significantly more time in Mac OS X (Darwin) than on Linux. The processor plays a minor role: the Opteron at 2.4 GHz is a bit faster than the Xeon 3.6 GHz running exactly the same (x86) code. However, it is clear that the operating system plays a much bigger role: a 2.5 GHz G5 running Linux easily beats the identical system with a 2.7 GHz G5 running Mac OS X. Despite the FreeBSD heritage, the TCP signals are very slow (4 times slower!) on Mac OS X.

The 20th Century’s energizing dynamic was totalitarian socialism. Leading that parade were proponents like Stalin and Communist Russia, Hitler and his National Socialist Party, China’s Chairman Mao and a host of lesser lights like Saddam Hussein in Iraq. All preached the equality of outcomes for their people despite their own personal power-hungry obsessions. All seduced the world with their “humanity” that no one should paid more for their work than any other. They all preached a socialism that elevated the group at the expense of the individual. Fortunately for America, their citizens continued their abiding devotion to individualism during the...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The rock band Nine Inch Nails said on Friday it canceled plans to appear on next week's MTV Movie Awards after the network questioned the band's plans to perform in front of an image of President Bush. The band was slated to perform "The Hand That Feeds," the first single from its latest album. A Los Angeles Times review called the song "a warning against blind acceptance of authority, including that of a president leading his nation to war." "We were set to perform 'The Hand That Feeds' with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W....

RALEIGH, N.C. (NNS) -- Former Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class-turned-actor/comedian Bill Cosby took time to honor a local Navy Reservist for her service during his stand-up performance May 15 in Raleigh, N.C. Navy Counselor 1st Class Lauren R. Fyfe contacted Cosby’s management when she found out he was going to be performing in her hometown while she was on leave. All Fyfe said she was hoping for was the opportunity to have Cosby pose in a picture with her holding an American flag she owned. “The flag has been with me everywhere I go in the Navy,” said Fyfe. “Once, I...

Viagra could be the key to boosting countries' flagging economic performance, it's being claimed. Doctors at a medical health conference in Singapore have been warned sexual problems could take a high economic toll. Psychiatrist Emil Man-Lun Ng, from the University of Hong Kong, said: "If you are sexually not fulfilled, your quality of life will decrease, which leads to a dip in the resources of the country and the economy." The professor, who is founder of the Asian Federation for Sexual Health, is among the experts from Asia, Europe and the US attending the three-day Sex Health Conference. He said:...

  AUGUSTA — Gov. John E. Baldacci’s job approval rating plunged over the cliff this week, according to a New Jersey-based polling organization’s state-by-state comparison of chief executives. Although nearly 70 percent of respondents approved of his job performance in a February poll, according to one Maine pollster, Baldacci’s approval rating plummeted to 37 percent over the weekend, according to SurveyUSA, one of the country’s largest computerized polling companies. A subsidiary of Hypotenuse Inc. of Verona, N.J., SurveyUSA conducts numerous “bullet polls” for 50 television stations across the country, including WLBZ-TV Channel 2 in Bangor and WCSH-TV Channel 6...

THE LEGACY COSTS OF DOING BUSINESSOn the back of both Ford [NYSE: F] and General Motors [NYSE: GM] having their credit ratings reduced to junk status this past week ? I thought it might be appropriate to take a closer look at why?Some would have us believe that North American automakers simply don’t build them like they used to! Well, being a proud owner of a 1980 Cutlass Supreme, with less than 100k original kilometers on the clock, I would concur with this line of thought. But then again, who really does build them the way they used to anyway? ...

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites. Three decades of my...

It was quite the site to behold. There they sat; McGwire, Sosa, Schilling, Palmeiro, some of today’s superstars of baseball and quite possibly tomorrow’s Hall of Famers. But this moment wasn’t about double-plays or RBIs, and instead of home or away jerseys they were wearing pinstripes of the Brooks Brothers variety. These icons of the diamond – along with Frank Thomas who joined them by teleconference and Jose Canseco who sat shunned at the end of the table – were subpoenaed by the United States Congress to talk about steroid abuse in Major League Baseball. A disturbing thought for a...

A private memo has just been released that demonstrates the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Committee intentionally watered down its report on city finances in 2002. This is the clearest evidence to date that the Mayor knew of the city’s financial crisis back in 2002. The memo also makes a troubling reference to concerns over the City’s ball park bonds and credit rating in the context of the Blue Ribbon Report being watered down. The memo is available online at www.sandiegobudget.org so you can read and judge for yourself. Below is our press release; the link to the San Diego City Beat...

Last fall, Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson released the names of schools that failed to make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) in the 2003-04 school year, as required by federal law. The good news: The number of low-performing schools dropped significantly from 436 in 2003 to 281 in 2004. The bad news: Most of the progress can be credited to lower standards, not higher academic achievement. In fact, some of the now-passing schools even regressed academically. It took weeks of data-crunching by Evergreen Freedom Foundation staff to determine how schools would have measured up in 2004 if the standards...

OLYMPIA—As early as tomorrow, the House may vote on a bill to authorize performance audits of state government. As currently drafted, however, that bill (HB 1064) falls short of meeting the necessary standards to ensure that performance audits are independently and comprehensively conducted by the people's state auditor. Hoping to seize on the current opportunity, the state auditor's office has suggested an amendment to HB 1064, which addresses the bill's current shortcomings. The state auditor's amendment surpasses the language provided to legislators in the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's performance audit pledge. Fifty-three Representatives are signers of EFF's performance audit pledge. The...

Just when it started to look inevitable that comprehensive performance audits would finally become law, Governor Christine Gregoire's staff is now blurring that vision. Despite claiming that "change is here and more is coming," Gregoire appears to be doing her best impersonation of former Governor Gary Locke. As governor, Locke routinely vetoed bills authorizing the state auditor to conduct performance audits of state government. Based on testimony provided by Governor Gregoire's office at two recent performance audit hearings, it appears that instead of "change," voters can expect more of the same. Consider the following testimony (in italics) from Mary Campbell,...

Are taxpayer-subsidized infomercials and payoffs to friendly commentators the federal government's answer to education problems? The U.S. Education Department's secret million-dollar taxpayer-financed marketing campaign to sell the No Child Left Behind Act is only a symptom of what's wrong. Former President Ronald Reagan used to say that government is not the solution, it's the problem. But we are in the post-Clinton era, and in 1997 former President Bill Clinton told us in Northbrook, Ill., to get over "our love of local control of the schools." While national media are filled with pictures of horrors all over the world, the biggest...

OLYMPIA—Sen. Pam Roach (R-Auburn) has drafted a performance audit bill reflecting 100 percent of the model language the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) submitted to legislators in the form of a performance audit pledge last year. Fifty-three members of the House (including Speaker Frank Chopp) and 17 members of the Senate signed EFF's performance audit pledge. This means there should be no obstacles to a companion bill being introduced in the House. "The legislature appears poised to finally adopt independent and comprehensive performance audits of state government," said Jason Mercier, budget research analyst for EFF. "We would like to thank Sen....

Some people seem to believe that education spending must arbitrarily increase each year regardless of whether or not current expenditures are resulting in necessary student achievement or efficient operations. This precept runs counter to a Priorities of Government (POG) review. If the results of the 2004 election are any indication, voters seem to agree. When asked to raise their taxes by more than a billion dollars per year to support increased education spending, sixty percent of Washington voters said "no" by rejecting Initiative 884 (I-884). Some claim I-884 failed not because it was an unnecessary tax increase, but because it...

It's time again to grade the governor. Wednesday will mark one year in office for Arnold Schwarzenegger — one full year of learning on the job. How's he progressing? There is only one fair way to go about this: Split the grade in two. • One grade for politics. Give him a solid A. • A second grade for policy. He gets a generous C. A tougher grader would have given the guy a D in policy — or categorize it as substance, all that serious stuff a governor is supposed to do to solve state problems. The one problem...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Claims by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review that the state can save $32 billion over five years by reorganizing state government are overblown and the problems caused by such a massive shake-up have been largely overlooked, according to a report made Friday by the Legislative Analyst. Schwarzenegger launched the review in January to fulfill a campaign pledge to reinvigorate state government. The group issued a 2,700-page report earlier this month that offered more than 1,000 recommendations - including the slower growth of state jobs, merging dozens of departments and improving customer service. He also said the...

August 27, 2004 An Initial Assessment of the California Performance Review On August 3, 2004, the California Performance Review (CPR) released its report on reforming California's state government, with the aim of making it more efficient and more responsive to its citizens. This report provides our initial comments on the CPR report. Specifically, we: (1) provide an overview of its reorganization framework and other individual recommendations, (2) discuss the savings it assumes from its major proposals, and (3) raise key issues and considerations relating to CPR's various proposals.Introduction On August 3, 2004, the California Performance Review (CPR) released its report...

Sponsors of Initiative 884 (the billion-dollar education tax increase proposal) falsely claim the measure is targeted, accountable and efficient. They claim it will solve the crisis of low student achievement in our state. They are wrong. The initiative will actually harm students because it targets the new billion dollars toward failed programs instead of proven solutions. We owe it to students and taxpayers to solve the problems, not make them worse. Is education spending down? No. Washington is spending more than ever before on education. Per-pupil funding has increased more than 30% in the last decade (almost 17% in inflation-adjusted...

Each year the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) puts together a play book for Democrats to use in their campaigns and policy recommendations. The DLC describes these recommendations as "a ‘menu' of effective, field-tested New Democrat policy proposals from which you can model initiatives in your own states, cities and communities." Under the DLC's budget section for the 2004 campaign, performance reviews (audits) are the DLC's top priority. This recommendation bodes well for the prospect of Washington state finally adopting and authorizing independent performance audits on a bi-partisan basis. In fact, Washington's Speaker of the House, Frank Chopp, has signed the...

CHARLESTON -- Black students in West Virginia perform well in their early years, but then experience a sharp decline, said Pat Kusimo of the Governor's Minority Students Strategy Council. "Kids start out in elementary school doing much better than in middle school," Kusimo said. And by high school, "it is almost disastrous achievement." To correct the problem among the state's largest minority group, Kusimo and council Chairwoman Patricia Petty Wilson suggested a series of local meetings to provide special training for counselors and psychologists to learn how to help minority and poor children achieve. Statistics show that 90 percent of...

MIDI - YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME Mary Landrieu...she is so lame...and she really gives stupid such a bad name They'll fight 30 hours or more...the big battle in the cultural war RAT obstruction...is the game that they play...time to end it The Senate floor...a drama queen...she cannot wait to play out her scene Performance time...and the makeup's right...this is her primetime and she's ready tonight New Orleans, hang down your head.........down low You voters...oh, what you've done to us...we have to ask you - why didn't you know? Mary Landrieu...she is so lame...she gives stupid such a...