Romney's retort enraged a speechless Goodridge; he didn't care, and by referring to her biological daughter as "adopted," it was clear he hadn't even been listening. By the time she was back in the hallway, she was reduced to tears. "I really kind of lost it," says Goodridge. "I've never stood before someone who had no capacity for empathy."
But last week, when he got his hands on a laptop running the newest version of Windows for the first time, Mr. McCarthy was flummoxed.
Many of the familiar signposts from PCs of yore are gone in Microsoft's new software, Windows 8, like the Start button for getting to programs and the drop-down menus that list their functions.
It took Mr. McCarthy several minutes just to figure out how to compose an e-mail message in Windows 8, which has a stripped-down look and on-screen buttons that at times resemble the runic assembly instructions for Ikea furniture.
"It made me feel like the biggest amateur computer user ever," said Mr. McCarthy, 59, a copywriter in New York.
That bad, hyperbolic simile was written by L. Ron Hubbard, and it's in "Battlefield Earth," Hubbard's massive 1982 sci-fi novel, listed on Romney's Facebook page as one of his favorite books.
Much about Romney the public figure — and about his opponent and presidential candidates in general — seems depressingly scripted. But "Battlefield Earth" is a work that's so odd, and such an unlikely choice for any political candidate to name as a favorite, I have little doubt that Romney actually read it. Why else would the first Mormon presidential nominee of a major political party name the founder of the Church of Scientology as one of his favorite authors?
 | READ: Paul Ryan's Letters Requesting Stimulus, EPA Funds | |
| WASHINGTON -- During Thursday night's vice presidential debate, Vice President Joe Biden attacked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for criticizing the president's stimulus act despite having sent two separate requests for stimulus funds for his district. Biden was wrong. Ryan sent at least four requests. A Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between Ryan's office and the Environmental Protection Agency, filed by The Huffington Post, unearthed two additional instances in which the Wisconsin Republican petitioned for American Recovery Act funds. In addition, there were many other occasions in which the GOP vice presidential nominee asked the EPA for grant money for projects in Wisconsin's 1st District, which encompasses Ryan's hometown of Janesville and has a slight Democratic lean. Combined, the letters muddy Ryan's claim that the stimulus wasn't helpful and that government spending, more broadly, doesn't assist small businesses. The letters, Ryan's spokesman Brendan Buck said, were sent as part of the congressman's basic responsibility to advocate on behalf of his district. "Part of being a congressman is vouching for constituents and helping them navigate the federal bureaucracy when asked," he said. But the letters' language reveals a congressman who was involved in reviewing the applications and determining that taxpayer money could be useful economically. Moreover, the direct petitioning of the EPA could prove awkward for the Republican ticket, owing to the insistence among many in the GOP that the agency is a hindrance and should be eliminated. The Associated Press reported on some of the letters on Friday morning. It did not post copies of the letters, which The Huffington Post has done below. Paul Ryan Letters On May 4, 2009, Ryan wrote a letter to the EPA office in Chicago expressing his "support for the National School Transportation Association's (NSTA) application to the Recovery Act National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program, which was submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency." "I have reviewed the grant proposal that the NSTA has submitted, and I am confident that they would make effective use of the requested funds," Ryan wrote. According to EPA records, the National School Transportation Association was awarded $2.442 million in stimulus funds. Other efforts by Ryan were less successful. In late December 2009 and early January 2010, Ryan wrote three separate letters to the EPA on behalf of the Village of Sharon in an attempt to secure $550,000 in stimulus funds for utility repairs. The village, as Ryan noted, had worked to get the projects "shovel ready" so that they met requirements for the American Recovery Act. But despite Sharon operating under the assumption that the grant would be awarded, it wasn't. "The Village insists that while they were getting the project 'shovel ready,' no actual construction commenced before October 1, 2008. The Village also contends that it met all of the requirements of the grant, scoring extremely high in the grant evaluation process," Ryan wrote on Dec. 2, 2009. "To rescind a grant award after it was announced and after a project was completed under the assumption that those funds would be paid would be economically devastating to this small community." On Jan. 7, 2010, Ryan wrote again, asking for feedback and information. On Jan. 20, 2010, he wrote once more, saying that the "timeline" for the EPA's response "is not acceptable." An official with the Village of Sharon told the Huffington Post that Ryan's efforts were for naught. "When it came to getting the stimulus funds we were not approved," the official said. Many of these correspondences were in line with what virtually every lawmakers does in carrying out his or her constituent duties. But as Biden charged in Thursday night's debate, for Ryan -- who has taken a hard line against both the stimulus and government spending in general -- the requests have opened him up to charges of hypocrisy and insincerity. "I love that," Biden said. "This was such a bad program, and he writes me a letter saying, writes the Department of Energy a letter saying, `The reason we need this stimulus, it will create growth and jobs.' His words. And now he's sitting here looking at me." As the AP noted, Ryan made many such petitions while in Congress. He asked the Food Stamps Access Research program to approve a grant proposal by the Kenosha community center for purposes of educating families about the nutritional benefits of food stamps. In 2002, he wrote the Agriculture Department to help with a loan guarantee to develop a pork packing and processing plant for farms. In 2010, he wrote the Department of Health and Human Services to send money to a Kenosha health center to help "thousands of new patients" get coverage. The dozens of letters that Ryan wrote to the EPA underscore the dichotomy of Ryan's approach to the role of the government. The vast majority of the letters were banal efforts to help constituents with rules and regulations. Several of them were formal complaints about EPA overreach. But a number were requests for financial help. Many of those requests sought funding to study area brownfields that could be redeveloped. Brownfields are former industrial properties -- a boarded-up factory, a shuttered gas station -- that might be contaminated by hazardous materials. When Ryan's hometown of Janesville requested federal monies to study its numerous brownfields, as previously reported by HuffPost, Ryan did not write a letter of support. But he did lobby the EPA on behalf of Kenosha and Racine brownfields projects. On Oct. 10, 2006, Ryan wrote EPA administrator Stephen Johnson, expressing his "support for the Milwaukee Community Service Corps' (MCSC) application for the Brownfields Job Training Grant, which was recently submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency." On Dec. 8, 2006, he wrote again, this time in support of the City of Kenosha's grant application to the Brownfields Assessment Grant Program. On Oct. 9, 2009, he wrote EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, backing Racine County's application for the EPA's Brownfields Site Assessment Grant. "I have reviewed Racine's County's grant narrative, and I believe they would make effective use of the funds they would receive from the EPA," Ryan said. "I was pleased to learn that their proposed Brownfield's assessment project will help sustain, clean up, and restore the local community and the ecological systems that support them." In the fall of 2011, Ryan wrote a regional administrator of the EPA, urging her to consider an application from a constituent whose business -- BioGenesis Enterprises -- had approached the EPA two years earlier seeking funding. BioGenesis, which had already received federal funding through an earmark under the Weather Resources Development Act, got consideration for additional federal money after Ryan's letter. BioGenesis had sought funds to use the company's new technology for decontaminating sediment. The EPA ultimately rejected the funding request after several back-and-forths with the company. "As the company provided more details, it became increasingly clear that there were a number of insurmountable programmatic constraints and procurement requirements," the agency wrote Ryan on Dec. 28, 2011. "Unfortunately, it was not feasible to proceed." The EPA went on to note that it was "unfortunate" that the agency simply didn't have the funding to support BioGenesis' "promising" technology. BioGenesis did not return a request for comment. Ryan's success rate in helping out constituents is hard to ascertain. The Huffington Post contacted several, many of who said they didn't end up receiving help. Ronald Andersen is one those constituents. The owner of All Clean Pressure Washing of Wisconsin pursued a contract with the EPA in 2007 to help clean up federal buildings. He got a hand in the matter from Ryan. The congressman wrote a letter to the agency asking it to "carefully review" Andersen's "unsolicited proposal." The EPA did review did review the proposal, and decided to pass. Andersen continues to blame Ryan for not doing more. "He said he is for small business -- he didn't help nobody in small business," Andersen told The Huffington Post. "He sent me a letter, that's about it. I thought he would help. All he did was give me excuses. ... He didn't do nothing for me. So I will never vote for him again." | ||
What Ryan said about "Detroit West" and his commitment to maintaining a muscular auto industry sounded great.
"Know this: We want the strongest auto sector. We want American manufacturing to have a comeback," he declared. "And the way we do that is we stop sending all our decisions to Washington in a government-driven economy."
But a "government-driven economy" didn't harm the auto industry. It helped.
When the industry was tanking, President Obama convinced Congress to support an auto bailout that, by most accounts, renewed General Motors and Chrysler, keeping factories going and saving hundreds of thousands of jobs.
It was Mitt Romney who wanted to "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
And what of Ryan?
He voted for "free-trade" agreements—particularly the extension of permanent "Most-Favored Nation" trading status to China—that were devastating for the auto industry in what he refers to as "Detroit West." He opposed moves to mitigate against the damage, including the Currency Reform and Fair Trade Act. He rejected industrial policies and planning initiatives that might have helped "Detroit West."
Data users in the intelligence community will have access to a common desktop and common cloud-based network starting in March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Oct. 9 in a keynote address to the GEOINT 2012 Symposium in Orlando, Fla..
It's the first tangible result from an initiative ordered by Clapper in 2011 to integrate IT across the intelligence community, focusing on building a single cloud-based enterprise system.
Agencies are working together on the effort, with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency taking the lead on building a common desktop, and the CIA and National Security Agency leading the cloud effort.
"We have no choice. We have to move in this direction," said Al Tarasiuk, the DNI's CIO.
Mitt Romney sold himself as the BFF of coal Friday afternoon in order to appeal to Appalachian voters in Abingdon, Virginia, as well as talking down job numbers under Obama. But Mitt Romney is no BFF to coal and jobs in coal are at a 15 year high, while national unemployment hit the lowest level since 2009 today.
Not only did Romney use unpaid coal workers who lost pay due to his rally in a campaign ad, but as Governor, Romney said a Massachusetts coal-fired plant "kills people" and touted his power plant regulations there as the "toughest in the nation." He also denied a coal plant an extension to comply with regulations.
Creation science asserts that the biblical account, that dinosaurs were created on day 6 of creation[3]approximately 6,000 years ago, along with other land animals, and therefore co-existed with humans, thusdebunking the Theory of Evolution and the beliefs of evolutionary scientists about the age and creation of the earth.
Creation science shows that dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants[4]; that pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning[5]; that many of the fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood[6]; and that possibly some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark are still around today.[7] At least 300 distinct genera of dinosaur have been identified.[8]
Archaeological, fossil, and documentary evidence supports the logical conclusion that dinosaurs co-existed with mankind until at least relatively recent times.[citation needed]
Because the term only came into use in the 19th century, the Bible does not use the word "dinosaur." However, there are numerous references throughout the biblical account. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are clearly references to dinosaurs,[9] [10] although others have claimed that Behemoth and Leviathan are references to a hippopotamus or elephant and a crocodile respectively. However, the Biblical descriptions do not fit those creatures, note that hippopotamuses and elephants do not have a "tail like a cedar". Furthermore, even if the terms did refer to other animals, this does not necessarily invalidate the existence of dinosaurs. The Creation account was not intended as a comprehensive list of all animals God created - it does not for instance state explicitly that He created theferret. However, Genesis does state that God created all animals, which would include any not mentioned by name.
