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Bob Hope - priceless political one-liner

Are tolls going to be enforced on private drivers? The German government, along with every car owner in the European Union, will finally get a definitive answer to that question on Tuesday. If the European Court of Justice (ECJ) rules in favor of the tolls, all motorists will be charged to drive on German highways. The fees, known as "vignettes," are to be collected according to the time traveled on the autobahn. For cars registered in Germany, however, owners will get a credit deductible from the motor vehicle tax as compensation, meaning the costs would be offset, and ultimately, Germans...

High levels of methane could potentially be generated underground by microbes called methanogens that survive without oxygen and produce the gas as a metabolic byproduct. Project scientist Ashwin R. Vasavada told the Curiosity science team in an email that “Given this surprising result, we’ve reorganized the weekend to run a follow-up experiment,” the Times wrote. The readings on Wednesday are over three times that of a sudden spike in 2013 that lasted several months; after first finding nothing after its touchdown in 2012, Curiosity detected approximately seven parts per billion of methane later in the year. The newest measurements are...

Marin transportation officials were cautiously optimistic Monday after a recent court ruling upheld a major funding source for several local highway projects, but the funding could be in limbo because of appeals. “We have tremendous congestion and these projects are congestion relievers,” said Dianne Steinhauser, executive director of the Transportation Authority of Marin. “We hear from the public constantly about how bad the congestion is right now. We’re hoping that this money starts flowing. It’d be great to see it by the end of 2019.” Regional Measure 3, the June 2018 ballot measure that increases tolls for seven Bay Area...

Fifty-five pages of texts between Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort make their way online.

Harris County prosecutors are threatening to issue grand jury subpoenas to the Houston Police Department for details about confidential informants used by narcotics officers at the center of the botched Harding Street drug raid in January that ended with two residents dead and five officers injured. After police failed to fulfill a previous request for the information in May, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Natasha Sinclair sent a one-page letter Thursday demanding HPD turn over a trove of information relating to the bust, including the identities of informants used by Squad 15 since 2014, the names of those who signed...

Tucker Carlson’s cable-tv show begins identically each night. After the words “Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight”—always intoned and inflected exactly the same way—the host launches into an opening monologue on the news of the day, or what he thinks ought to be the news of the day. On January 2, 2019, though, there was no news. So Carlson used the holiday lull to deliver a non-stop, 15-minute, 2,571-word evisceration of America’s ruling class—political, industrial, financial, intellectual, and cultural. Our rulers, he insisted, had failed at their ostensible tasks: to improve the health of the country and the...

What is clear is the prospect of further damage to the UN's already shaky credibility Three cases of human rights abuses reared their ugly head again this week. The United Nations’ role has been called into question, including the responses of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to the criticisms. The first human rights case involves Myanmar. The Free Rohingya Coalition criticized Secretary General Guterres and former UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar Renata Lok-Dessallien for failing to safeguard thousands of Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, in Myanmar. The group cited the findings in a 36-page official report entitled “A brief and...

Austin's police chief says three new homeless ordinances are about to "fundamentally change" the department's enforcement. Early Friday morning the Austin City Council voted to rescind the homeless camping ban changing the city’s approach to dealing with homelessness. The city's ban on sitting, lying down and camping in public spaces is being replaced with new ordinances that change how police can respond to calls from the public. “If we receive a call from a business owner or from a citizen involving an individual that may be sitting or lying in a public space, whether it be in front of a...

In the days ahead, Biden will continue to make embarrassing gaffes, move further to the left politically, apologize for previous statements and attempt to pacify his critics Since his entry into the race, confident supporters of former Vice President Joe Biden have been predicting his ascension to the White House and an easy victory over President Trump next year. They point to polls which show Biden leading his Democratic opponents in his march toward the nomination and defeating President Trump in a hypothetical 2020 election matchup. The problem with this analysis is that Joe Biden is a very flawed candidate....

ORLANDO, Fla.—The state dubbed it the I-4 Ultimate for its grand scope. For some here, it’s more like the ultimate headache. A reconstruction of 21 miles of congested interstate highway through the heart of Orlando will build or rebuild 140 bridges, redesign 15 interchanges, move exits and add new toll lanes, in a $2.3 billion project to smooth traffic through one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities. Dense cities have grown up around the aging freeways, hemming them in so that expensive engineering feats are needed to do work on them. Yet work is often unavoidable. I-4, for instance, was built...

The Southern Baptist Convention chose David Uth, pastor of First Baptist Church in Orlando, as the president of the Pastor’s Conference for the next year’s annual meeting. Many should be reminded about who Uth is, and ask the question whether or not SBC leadership will be making strides for LGBTQ inclusion along with the rest of their latest compromises. David Uth hosted a gay-affirming LGBTQ event in the wake of the Orlando gay night club shooting at his church, FBC Orlando. In case you have forgotten, #LoveOrlando was a gay-straight hug fest that happened at the church in the shooting’s...

Few jobs are more thankless, or invite more cursing and murderous glares on any given workday, than that of a parking enforcement officer. But Washington, D.C., wants to find 80 residents to do the job for nothing. Such is the level of frustration over the traffic and road-safety problems in the nation’s capital that a package of proposals under review by the District of Columbia Council includes enlisting private citizens to help enforce parking laws. At the moment, the plan is just a single line in a 19-page bill that was introduced last month. The traffic bill is mostly about...

Two men have been rushed to hospital after suffering burns following a suspected acid attack in East London, according to reports.Police were called to an incident on Cricketfield Road near Hackney Downs in the early evening after receiving reports of a corrosive substance being thrown on tow men.A car chase took place just before the attack, with one colliding into a wall, according to witnesses.Witnesses then saw a corrosive substance being thrown over two men.

Just last week, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz dismissed toll opponents as “emotional.” He claimed that they cling unthinkingly to “perceived details” such as that the number of gantries remain unfixed and the amount of revenue actually to be obtained from out-of-staters remains not only undetermined, but undeterminable. He did not mention, but could have, opponents’ continuing concerns about the eventual rate of tolls; about whether a state-wide, shared-sacrifice tolling structure will be authorized by the U.S. D.O.T. as promised, and what happens if it isn’t; and how much gross revenue from tolling will be eaten up by costs, which have...

It’s been said that the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. In a similar vein, the greatest trick the anti-Christ will pull will be to convince men he is the savior of the world instead of its destroyer, according to a powerful radio sermon given by Venerable Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in 1947 that was dug up out of a digital archive and published on YouTube last week. Like the devil, whose trademark signature is to twist the truth to sell sin, so the anti-Christ, according to Sheen, will...

A Michigan man who beat the odds to win the Mega Million lottery has been forced to split the earnings with his ex-wife amid their divorce.

Temecula Trump Rallies Every first Friday of the month located at the Temecula Duck Pond & Veterans Memorial in Temecula California (corner of Rancho California and Ynez Roads); 4:00-6:00 p.m. Bring along your American flags, banners, Trump and MAGA/KAG signs, drinking water, lawn chairs, and dress appropriately for the weather. More info and/or questions ... e-mail Bob at: bobkowell@aol.com Let's Keep America Great & Keep On Trumpin'

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday delayed a nationwide immigration sweep to deport people living the United States illegally, including families, saying he would give lawmakers two weeks to work out solutions for the southern border. The move came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump on Friday asking him to call off the raids. But three administration officials said scrapping the operation was not just about politics. They said Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaders had expressed serious concerns that officers’ safety would be in jeopardy because too many details about the raids had been made public. The...

Hervé Pierre designs for a very specific customer: First Lady Melania Trump. We take you inside his New York City studio.