What, Me Cancer?

You would think people would start throwing away their cell phones right? Well...wrong! People are completely addicted to cell phones now. Cancer is not going to make any difference. Nobody will care at all. People drink booze and they know it will kill them. They smoke and they know it will kill them. You can put cell phones on that pantheon of greatness.

Noting that in the highlighted portion...when they talk about the World Health Organization (WHO) with the acronym that comes out as the WHO. As in...alllllllright!!!!

The thrill of using a cell phone transcends any possible health risk. That's the same way I feel about booze. And four out of five dentists agree.

Using a mobile phone might increase the risk of developing certain types of brain tumors and consumers should consider ways of reducing their exposure, World Health Organization (WHO) cancer experts said on Tuesday.

A working group of 31 scientists from 14 countries meeting at the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said a review of all the available scientific evidence suggested cell phone use should be classified as "possibly carcinogenic."

The classification, which puts mobile phone use in the same broad IARC cancer risk category as lead, chloroform and coffee, could spur the United Nations health body to look again at its guidelines on mobile phones, the scientists said.

But more lengthy and detailed research is needed before a more definitive answer on any link can be given.

The WHO had previously said there was no established evidence for a link between cell phone use and cancer.

"After reviewing essentially all the evidence that is relevant ... the working group classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans," Jonathan Samet, chair of the IARC group, said in a telebriefing.

He said some evidence suggested a link between an increased risk for glioma, a type of brain cancer, and mobile phone use.

[Reuters]

Goodbye To All That

I don't have the words for this one.

Sorry, stoners.

The Dutch government said Friday that it will ban tourists from buying marijuana from the Netherlands' famed "coffee shops."

Under the new rules spearheaded by far-right political leaders, only Dutch citizens will be able to enter the stores, and they too will face tougher restrictions.

Resident patrons will be required to sign up for a one-year membership, and each shop will have a maximum of 1,500 members, according to a justice ministry spokesman.

Critics argue the move, which should be enacted by the end of the year, could pulverize tourism.

The Netherlands – particularly Amsterdam, which is home to 220 coffee shops -- is known for having one of Europe's most lenient soft drug policies. The country's cannabis cafes have become popular attractions.

There are also fears that the move will result in a black market for the drugs.

[Daily News]

Summer Bummer As Gas Costs Soar And People Are Trapped At Home With Their Families

Not that driving in a car with a bunch of screaming kids is any bargain, but this summer, if you want to make money, learn how to treat the dread disease cabin fever, as many folks will be suffering from this in the sweltering heat. After being trapped indoors all winter through record snow and floods, here comes summer, and we're staying home because filling up my gas tank will cost about $75.

I expect there to be an upsurge in block parties and homicidal rage when barbecues descend into drunken orgies of violence as dormant family issues rise to the surface, and there is no escape. If you want to leave you have to walk home.

Also, I read an article like this and I think, why do we even bother having a government? You know this is the same shit I was reading about 30-40 years ago? High gas prices, blame OPEC, dependence on foreign oil, yada yada yada. Nothing really changes because there is nobody steering the ship. We could've had a chimp running things for the last 40 years and gotten the same result. Maybe better.

There's less money this summer for hotel rooms, surfboards and bathing suits. It's all going into the gas tank.

High prices at the pump are putting a squeeze on the family budget as the traditional summer driving season begins. For every $10 the typical household earns before taxes, almost a full dollar now goes toward gas, a 40 percent bigger bite than normal.

Households spent an average of $369 on gas last month. In April 2009, they spent just $201. Families now spend more filling up than they spend on cars, clothes or recreation. Last year, they spent less on gasoline than each of those things.

Jeffrey Wayman of Cape Charles, Va., spent Friday riding his motorcycle to North Carolina's Outer Banks, a day trip with his wife. They decided to eat snacks in a gas station parking lot rather than buy lunch because rising fuel prices have eaten so much into their budget over the past year that they can't ride as frequently as they would like.

"We used to do it a lot more, but not as much now," he said. "You have to cut back when you have a $480 gas bill a month."

Alex Martinez, a senior at Arcadia High School outside Los Angeles, said his family's trips to San Francisco, which they usually take once or more a year, are on hold. As he stopped at a gas station to put $5 of fuel in his car -- not much more than a gallon -- he said the high prices are crimping social life for him and his friends.

"We're always worrying, `How are we going to get home. We've got less than half a gallon left,'" Martinez said. "We definitely can't go out as much, and we can't go as far."

As Memorial Day weekend opens, the nationwide average for a gallon of unleaded is $3.81. Though prices have drifted lower in recent days, analysts expect average price for 2011 to come in higher than the previous record, $3.25 in 2008. A year ago, gas cost $2.76.

[Assocaited Press]

IMF Sex Crisis Eclipsed By Collapse Of Paltrow Record Deal

Let me be the first to say this sucks. I thought her cookbook was for shit, but maybe she could make a rockin' album? She's an actress. She knows how to do things. It's no loss for her, because she can just move on to her next project, or maybe form her own record company to put her record out. But it's a painful loss for US, the world of music lovers. We will have to WAIT. As a singer, she's no William Shatner, but there's a chance for something good here.

The IMF sex thing will blow over. But this busted deal could linger and join the other black clouds on the horizon. More and more it's looking like just one cloud. That's black. Who else is seeing that?

Gwyneth Paltrow has been sticking her perfectly exfoliated nose into everything lately: cooking, magazines, "Glee."

But now -- perhaps because of the backlash against her do-everything tear -- she's been denied a record deal.

Negotiations between Paltrow and Atlantic Records have reportedly fallen apart.

Claims that Paltrow wanted $1 million to sign have been circulating, though sources from her camp deny that.

[businessinsider.com]

Awesome Predictive Powers Of Daily Downers Confirmed Again

I wrote here awhile ago about the talking dogs thing. Back in JANUARY. So a few months go by, and they think nobody is paying attention and BAM, here we go. Turns out this talking dog thing was being researched by Nazi scientists, and no matter what else you can say about those guys, they were still scientists. They designed rockets and all kinds of things to kill lots of people very effectively. If they were looking into talking dogs you know there's something to it.

Just to review. Now that this news has emerged, the talking dogs thing should be elevated to the same level as the zombie thing. Unfortunately the Trump/Palin thing looks to be over, although I'm hoping a smart porn producer picks up on this idea. It's absolute gold. If someone makes a porno movie out of it I won't even sue. Then later will come Chinese world domination and other possible disasters, but it's possible none of them will matter after the zombies and talking dogs are done with us.

It's further proof that Hitler was barking mad.

In his new book Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities, Cardiff University historian Jan Bondeson mines obscure German periodicals to reveal the Nazis' failed attempt to breed an army of educated dogs that could read, write and talk. "In the 1920s, Germany had numerous 'new animal psychologists' who believed dogs were nearly as intelligent as humans, and capable of abstract thinking and communication," he writes. "When the Nazi party took over, one might have thought they would be building concentration camps to lock these fanatics up, but instead they were actually very interested in their ideas."

According to the book, scientists envisioned a day when dogs would serve alongside German troops, and perhaps free up SS officers by guarding concentration camps. So to unlock all that canine potential, Hitler set up a Tier-Sprechschule (Animal Talking School) near Hanover and recruited "educated dogs" from throughout the country. Teachers claimed a number of incredible findings. An Airedale terrier named Rolf became a mythic figure of the project after teachers said he could spell by tapping his paw on a board (the number of taps represented the various letters of the alphabet). With that skill in hand, he mused on religion, learned foreign languages and even asked a noblewoman, "Can you wag your tail?" Perhaps most outlandish is the claim by his German masters that he asked to serve in the German army because he disliked the French. Another mutt barked "Mein Fuhrer" when asked to describe Hitler. And Don, a German pointer, is said to have imitated a human voice to bark, "Hungry! Give me cakes!" in German.

Germany's love of dogs may have blinded the Nazis to the outlandish goals of their project. "Part of the Nazi philosophy was that there was a strong bond between humans and nature. They believed a good Nazi should be an animal friend," Bondeson says. "Indeed, when they started interning Jews, the newspapers were flooded with outraged letters from Germans wondering what had happened to the pets they left behind."

Hitler, a well-known dog-lover, had two German Shepherds named Blondi and Bella. He killed Blondi shortly before killing himself in 1945.

[Time]

Bigger Than His Britches

The Captain would like to hear smart-ass, left-wing economists like Paul Krugman tell this guy that inflation isn't something to worry about right now.

A New Zealand truck driver says he blew up like a balloon when he fell onto a compressed air hose that pierced his buttock and forced pressurised air into his body.

Steven McCormack was standing on his truck's foot plate when he slipped and fell, breaking a compressed air hose off an air reservoir that powered the truck's brakes.

He fell hard onto the brass fitting, which pierced his left buttock and started pumping air into his body.

"I felt the air rush into my body and I felt like it was going to explode from my foot," he told local media from his hospital bed in the town of Whakatane.

[...]

Mr McCormack's workmates heard his screams and ran to him, quickly releasing a safety valve to stop the air flow, said Robbie Petersen, co-owner of the trucking company.

He was rushed to the hospital with terrible swelling and fluid in one lung. Doctors said the air had separated fat from muscle in McCormack's body, but had not entered his bloodstream.

Mr McCormack, 48, said his skin felt "like a pork roast" - crackling on the outside but soft underneath.

[Orange News]

Rabbit Slayers Drink 1/2 Price

Presumably Elmer Fudd has booked the next available flight to New Zeawand.

A Wanaka bar has taken to helping deal with Central Otago's rabbit plague by offering half-price beer to patrons who bring in dead rabbits.

Bullock Bar manager Margo Johnston said the bar would offer half-price jugs to anyone who brought in four rabbits to the bar tomorrow.

The idea for the promotion come about not only because the rabbits were a pest in the area but because the New Zealand Warriors were playing the Sydney Rabbitohs in a rugby league match, Ms Johnston said.

[...]

Unlike the Alexandra Easter Bunny Hunt, where some of the dead rabbits were buried in residential land, the dead rabbits were expected to be turned into dog food.

[The Southland Times]

Happiness is Such a Drag

If you're feeling really happy right now, there's something seriously wrong with you.

In a review paper published last week in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, researchers define what they call the "dark side of happiness": feeling happy all the time can destroy relationships and careers, while avidly pursuing happiness is bound to lead to disappointment.

[...]

“It’s happiness turned inward,’’ says June Gruber, a professor of psychology at Yale University who is studying mania. “They’re attuned only to their own happiness’’ and completely oblivious to what loved ones are feeling around them. It’s the flip side of depression, where individuals can only focus on their own suffering.

Researchers have found that people with high emotional states are more likely to engage in riskier behaviors like drug and alcohol use, gambling, sexual promiscuity, and drag racing.

[...]

In her recent research, [University of Denver psychologist and researcher Iris] Mauss discovered that those who value happiness the most have a lower state of well-being, less satisfaction with life, and are more likely to be depressed. She also found that teaching people to adopt happiness as a value caused them to feel more lonely and socially disconnected.

[Boston.com]

Real World Math Applies As Value Of Trump Casino Plunges 90%

What a great businessman. It's too bad this whole thing couldn't be orchestrated on TV. But no, business deals in the real world are based on what real people do with real brains, instead of a gaggle of asskissing quasi-celebrity has-beens trying to curry favor.

I've been to this casino and the review in here is dead on. The place is a dump. Of course it's also located about a mile away from the Boardwalk, but that's another story.

I love where they say how hard it is to get Trump's name off of everything. That sounds like the area where the most attention was paid to engineering - making sure his name was applied everywhere, indelibly. Best part is near the end, where the guy says Trump Entertainment paid more attention to the other two Atlantic City casinos they had. Those two went broke as well.

In Atlantic City, all that's golden is not Trump.

New Jersey casino regulators approved the sale of Trump Marina Hotel Casino on Monday to the owners of the Golden Nugget casinos in Nevada for $38 million -- about a tenth of what the property was expected to fetch just three years ago.

Landry's Inc. has rebranded the casino as the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, a name change that became official with Monday's vote by the Casino Control Commission.

The giant "TRUMP" letters have been removed from the front of the casino, though the top and rear of the casino-hotel still bear Donald Trump's name. A temporary banner proclaiming the casino as the Golden Nugget could be put up as soon as Tuesday, a company spokeswoman said.

Fertitta said renovations will be completed by December, including a remake of the casino's boxy, institutional facade.

"It is not going to have that hospital look anymore," he said. "It'll look like a totally different building. You will not recognize this property come December."

Work was already under way on the changeover Monday afternoon. About 200 slot machines near the top of the escalators from the parking lot garage were being removed for a restaurant, and prototypes of the newly made-over guest rooms were being left open for guests to wander through and admire. Swatches of colorful new carpeting were laid down in hotel hallways to show what will eventually replace the more drab patterns consisting of tens of thousands of interlocking letter "T"s, beneath the "Trump" name on each room door.

"We have been working on removing everything that says `Trump,' but it's overwhelming," said Amy Chasey, a Golden Nugget spokeswoman.

The sale leaves Trump Entertainment Resorts, which emerged last summer from its third stint in bankruptcy court, with two Boardwalk casinos -- its flagship trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort and the older Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.

Trump Entertainment has been trying to sell the Marina casino since May 2008, when it struck a deal with Coastal Marina LLC, run by former Donald Trump protege Richard Fields. Fields first agreed to pay $316 million. After the economy tanked, Trump and Coastal Marina agreed to a lower price of $270 million, but the deal fell apart in 2009 over disagreements about the physical condition of the casino.

Coastal claimed that summer that the Trump Marina needs at least $50 million in repairs. Things were so bad, Coastal Marina claimed in a lawsuit, the casino was putting plants under leaky windows and skylights to catch the drips when it rained rather than fix the leaks.

Fertitta said he will operate the Golden Nugget better than Trump Entertainment did.

"What shocked us was there's only one bar right at the front," he said. "It's almost like everything was done not to do business here. It was a big box."

He said Trump Entertainment Resorts paid more attention to its two other casinos than to Trump Marina.

"We will be 100 percent focused on driving business to the Golden Nugget," he said.

[Associated Press]

Head's Up ...

... up for auction, that is.

The severed head of the patron saint of genital diseases is to be sold at auction in County Meath next weekend.

The decapitated head of St Vitalis of Assisi has been in the possession of an Anglo-Irish family at Annesbrook House in Duleek for years now.

[...]

It is to be sold at an auction of the house’s contents next Sunday with a guideline price of between $1200 and $1800.

Saint Vitalis of Assisi was an Italian hermit and monk who died in 1370 and became a saint despite an early life marked by licentiousness and immorality.

In a bid to atone for his earlier sins, he went on pilgrimages to various sanctuaries and eventually became a Benedictine monk and later lived as a hermit, living in utter poverty near Assisi.

After his death he became known as a patron against sicknesses and diseases affecting the genitals.

[Irish Central]

The Latest Cry Of The Celebrity - Where's My Statue?

Talk is cheap. Show me the statue. That's the moral of the story. If I were Kareem I would feel slighted too, and I already feel slighted that there isn't a statue of me in an appropriate place somewhere in New York City. Really, insulting. Totally.

What's up with the Lakers? They don't have the money for a statue? They are blowing money like it's going out of style on a second rate team that went down peacefully to Dirk-i-stan without a whimper. And now they can't pay proper tribute to their past?

Maybe it's the NYC connection. Kareem is a NYCity kid. They are dissing the East Coast. That's all there is to it. Until they build that statue, I'm down on the Lakers, which is easy, cause I hate the fucking Lakers. Though they do have stylish unis.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar isn't happy. The former Lakers center, a member of the Hall of Fame, told a reporter from The Sporting News on Wednesday he feels "slighted" because there isn't a statue of him outside of Staples Center.

There are statues of Lakers guards Magic Johnson and Jerry West plus late announcer Chick Hearn, who join Kings great Wayne Gretzky and boxer Oscar De La Hoya in what's known as Star Plaza in front of the 12-year-old arena.

"I don't understand (it)," he told the magazine for a story posted on its website. "It's either an oversight or they're taking me for granted.

"I'm not going to try to read people's minds, but it doesn't make me happy. It's definitely a slight. I feel slighted."

Abdul-Jabbar teamed with Johnson to win five NBA championships during the Showtime era of the 1980s. He is the leading scorer in the history of the league with 38,387 points during his 20 seasons. He also was the league's MVP six times.

"There is no plan or timetable" for the next statue to be commissioned and unveiled, Lakers spokesman John Black said, and added "Kareem absolutely will be the next one. People in the organization have told him that.

"In my opinion, he's the greatest player who ever lived. Somebody had to go first. Somebody had to go second. Somebody had to go third.

"We value him and what he's done for us greatly."

[Press-Telegram, Long Beach, CA]

Private Prisons Profit By Leaving The Sick Ones Behind

Since the facts don't matter, nothing in here will matter. The fact that privitization is not a panacea and private industry will not handle everything the world has to throw at it will not influence opinion.

This is ugly on so many levels. First off, the private companies can be more "efficient" by leaving out the sick inmates. Why is the State so acquiescent to a system where they are getting screwed with the sick inmates? Nothing good about privitization at all.

And here is the really ugly part in this. Not a WORD in here about rehabilitation. That's out the window. The problem with prison is that the people that get in get OUT. And they are with all of us. It behooves us to pay attention to these people beyond dealing with them as cheaply as possible.

The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.

State Representative Chad Campbell of Arizona said private prisons “leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers.”

The state’s experience has particular relevance now, as many politicians have promised to ease budget problems by trimming state agencies. Florida and Ohio are planning major shifts toward private prisons, and Arizona is expected to sign deals doubling its private-inmate population.

The measures would be a shot in the arm for an industry that has struggled, in some places, to fill prison beds as the number of inmates nationwide has leveled off. But hopes of big taxpayer benefits might end in disappointment, independent experts say.

“There’s a perception that the private sector is always going to do it more efficiently and less costly,” said Russ Van Vleet, a former co-director of the University of Utah Criminal Justice Center. “But there really isn’t much out there that says that’s correct.”

Such has been the case lately in Arizona. Despite a state law stipulating that private prisons must create “cost savings,” the state’s own data indicate that inmates in private prisons can cost as much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do in state-run prisons.

The research, by the Arizona Department of Corrections, also reveals a murky aspect of private prisons that helps them appear less expensive: They often house only relatively healthy inmates.

“It’s cherry-picking,” said State Representative Chad Campbell, leader of the House Democrats. “They leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers and take the easy prisoners.”

[The New York Times]

Upcoming Rapture Calculations Foiled By Inability To Understand Basic Math

I'm terrible at math, and that may help me understand this because I can usually see when others are terrible at math. This whole theory of the rapture occurring on May 21, 2011 is based on a miscalculation.

A.D. stands for Anno Domini. Divides history into the years before Christ's birth (B.C.) and after his birth (A.D.). Consider this:

There is no year zero in this scheme, so the year AD 1 immediately follows the year 1 BC.

So if Jesus was born in the year 1 A.D., he didn't turn 1 until 2 A.D. And if he was 33 when he died, that would place his death in the year 34 A.D. Not 33 A.D. Jesus was crucified 722,135 days before May 21, 2011, not 722,500 days before. You get this by subtracting 365 days (one year) from Camping's figure. So since this first number is wrong, everything else that stems from these calculations is wrong. I can't tell you how satisfying it is for me to be able to point this out, since I can't even do long division. Just makes my day. Plus I'M PROBABLY GOING TO LIVE PAST SATURDAY whether these nuts like it or not!

It speaks volumes about the rapture crowd that this guy's influence was not affected by the fact that he was completely wrong the first time he predicted the rapture on Sept. 6, 1994. Plus none of them are spotting that this is one year off. But I guess since some people are so anxious to ascend to heaven they will not let bad math or being just plain wrong get in the way. My mistakes are largely unpublished. Can you imagine spending all your time on this crap and getting it wrong right from the jump? Nobody pointing it out. I hang out with a crowd of idiots and I feel pretty sure one of them would have figured this out and spared me the embarrassment. But I guess if the world goes on 17 years after you predicted it would end you are probably beyond embarrassment.

Anyway, good luck to all surviving the upcoming apocalypse! Whenever it may arrive.

The May 21 Judgment Day meme is the brainchild of an 89-year-old radio evangelist named Harold Camping. Using a mathematical system of his own creation to interpret obscure prophecies in the Bible, Camping originally predicted that Sept. 6, 1994 would be Judgment Day, or the day of the "Rapture" when Christian believers will ascend to heaven, leaving the rest of humanity to its deservedly dreary fate.

But 1994 came and went relatively uneventfully, and Camping has since reworked his equations in such a way that they now point to a May 21, 2011 Rapture. Once the 200 million true Christians (in Camping's estimation) have been whisked away this coming Saturday, he says hell on Earth will ensue and last for 5 months, until Oct. 21, at which point the world will end.

Here's the gist of Camping's calculation: He believes Christ was crucified on April 1, 33 A.D., exactly 722,500 days before May 21, 2011. That number, 722,500, is the square of 5 x 10 x 17. In Camping's numerological system, 5 represents atonement, 10 means completeness, and seventeen means heaven. "Five times 10 times 17 is telling you a story," Camping said on his Oakland-based talk show, Family Radio, last year. "It's the story from the time Christ made payment for your sins until you're completely saved."

He added, "I tell ya, I just about fell off my chair when I realized that."

Over the past few months, Camping's prophecy has gained considerable traction with Christian fundamentalists. Signs, billboards, and volunteer evangelists around the country have helped spread the word.

[LiveScience]

Trump Chooses $50 Million And TV Show Over Presidency And Date With Palin

While it is satisfying to report that my prediction came true, and Trump has finally dropped out of the race, this is a colossal downer for anyone who writes a blog, and especially a downer for me. I can't blame Trump for quitting, since he can make $50 million doing that stupid TV show for a little while as opposed to making next to nothing for the gigantic hassle of being President. Still a downer though. Man.

I was hoping that Trump and Palin would make all my dreams come true and turn the White House into their love nest and get married, but now there's probably no hope of that, or even any hope of Trump and Palin having a clandestine affair. Can you imagine the photographs that would accompany these stories? And the coverage of the Trump/Palin wedding? Why can't anything good ever happen to me?

Instead, we get the boring cut and dried reality (in Trump's case, blow dried) where Trump was never seriously considering a run, and the whole thing was a stunt to drive up his ratings and his price for re-signing to do "Celebrity Apprentice." Knew this months ago, but was hoping against hope that it would happen for real. Now back to wondering why anyone would think Trump was a good businessman, or even a businessman at all. We'll have to wait and see how the lawsuits against Trump's pseudo "developments" play out to have any more fun with him. Damn!

Donald J. Trump announced on Monday that he would not seek the presidency, a development less important for the Republican field or his national political future — if he ever had one — than for what it said about a media culture that increasingly seems to give the spotlight to the loudest, most outrageous voices. Trump chose a new contract with NBC, home of “Celebrity Apprentice,” over a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Mr. Trump spent months earnestly portraying himself as a potential nominee for a party whose coalition includes family values activists, antigambling religious leaders and deficit hawks, some of whom might just have blanched at his two divorces, casino holdings, penchant for debt financing and formerly liberal positions on some issues.

To some degree he succeeded, using a combination of attributes that made him uniquely qualified to capitalize on the times: Near-universal name recognition (enhanced by his prime-time berth on NBC as the host of “Celebrity Apprentice”), gobs of cash and two decades of experience putting his outsize personality to use in the service of headline creation, starting in the pre-Internet era with the New York City tabloids.

“The media made him, the media kept him, the media kept promoting him,” said Stuart Spencer, a former political strategist for Ronald Reagan. Speaking of the proliferation of news outlets interested in politics, Mr. Spencer, 84 and admittedly fascinated by the new landscape, lamented, “There’s no referee anymore to evaluate what are serious issues and what are serious candidates.”

Mr. Trump and his aides said he was dead serious about making a run. But, they said, before Mr. Trump could figure out whether the White House was his golden ring, he was confronted with the pile of gold NBC was offering for a continued role in “Celebrity Apprentice.”

As much as associates said Mr. Trump wanted to keep his political options open longer, the network needed him to make a decision by Monday, when it was announcing its fall television schedule to major advertisers in its annual presentation in New York. “Celebrity Apprentice” is one of its most important programs, and the network would not be able to line up sponsorship commitments as easily with Mr. Trump as a “maybe.”

A senior NBC executive said the network believed it had convinced Mr. Trump to stay on as of last week, though there was a brief period of doubt over the weekend after former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas said he would not run. “Donald started saying: ‘Huckabee’s out. Maybe I should stay in this thing,’ ” said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Television industry executives with knowledge of his negotiation said Mr. Trump’s new contract could bring him as much as $30 million over all, and other estimates published Monday put that figure at upward of $50 million.

[The New York Times]

Err On The Side Of Excess

You wonder how people can believe that there aren't stark environmental changes coming. Stark environmental changes that may leave us all in the cold, or in the water. And I'm not even talking about the headaches that come with the zombies or the talking dogs.

It's 3,000 square miles of land flooded with 20 feet of water for weeks. An extraordinary winter. Will it be the same next winter?

Whether we can answer that question or not, the one thing you can't even debate is what car to buy. Personally for comfort and style I recommend the Escalade. It looks great and YOU look great driving it! And if it's not big enough you can pull a little wagon behind it. With the rest of your STUFF in it. F***er.

Army engineers on Saturday opened a key spillway to allow the swollen Mississippi River to flood thousands of homes and crops but spare New Orleans and Louisiana's capital Baton Rouge.

The Army Corps of Engineers opened one of the 125 floodgates at the Morganza Spillway 45 miles northwest of Baton Rouge shortly after 3 p.m. CDT, sending a flume of water onto nearby fields.

The move, last taken in 1973, will channel floodwaters toward homes, farms, a wildlife refuge and a small oil refinery in the Atchafalaya River basin to avoid inundating Louisiana's two largest cities.

Weeks of heavy rains and runoff from an unusually snowy winter caused the Mississippi River to rise, flooding 3 million acres of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas and evoking comparisons to historic floods in 1927 and 1937.

It could take three weeks for the enormous flow of water to pass through a system of levees and spillways to the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles to the south, said Major General Michael Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission.

"It's putting tremendous pressure on the entire system as we try to work this amount of water through the Mississippi River tributaries," Walsh told reporters before the floodgates opened.

Some 3,000 square miles of land could be inundated in up to 20 feet of water for several weeks. When flows peak around May 22, the spillway will carry about 125,000 cubic feet per second, about one quarter of its capacity.

About 2,500 people live in the spillway's flood path, and 22,500 others, along with 11,000 buildings could be affected by backwater flooding -- the water pushed back into streams and tributaries that cannot flow normally into what will be an overwhelmed Atchafalaya River.

Some 18,000 acres of cropland could be flooded as waters rise, hitting their crest in about a week and remaining high for several weeks before subsiding.

[Reuters]