Del.icio.us Links

links for 2009-03-28

  • San Diego-based Aegis destroyer, USS Benfold (DDG 65) engaged multiple targets during this multi-event exercise with Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) Block IIIA and modified SM-2 BLK IV missiles. The overall objective of
    Stellar Daggers was to test the Aegis system's sea-based ability to simultaneously detect, track, engage and destroy multiple incoming air and ballistic missile threats during terminal or final phase of flight.
  • Meet Vince Shlomi. He's probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers. Shlomi, 44, was arrested last month on a felony battery charge following a violent confrontation with a prostitute in his South Beach hotel room. According to an arrest affidavit,
    (tags: Vince_Shlomi)
  • California will sustain $948 million in welfare cuts and $1.8 billion in higher taxes after fiscal leaders announced Friday that the state will not receive enough federal budget relief to avoid those measures.

    As part of a $40 billion deficit solution, state lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked state Treasurer Bill Lockyer and Department of Finance Director Mike Genest to determine by April 1 whether California will receive $10 billion in federal budgetary aid through June 2010.

    Genest's office issued a statement this morning saying that he and Lockyer believe California will receive only $8.17 billion that qualifies under the criteria in the budget agreement.

  • Seven states posted unemployment rates above 10 percent in February, as Georgia is inched toward the double digits, according to seasonally adjusted figures released Friday morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Georgia's unemployment rate for February was a record high 9.3 percent. Metro Atlanta's unemployment rate also was 9.3 percent in February.

    Michigan registered the nation’s worst rate, with 12 percent of its labor force out of work as of February 2009.

    Also in double digits were South Carolina (11 percent), Oregon (10.8 percent), North Carolina (10.7 percent), California (10.5 percent), Rhode Island (10.5 percent), and Nevada (10.1 percent).

    (tags: California)
  • California's budget crisis could turn out to be a good thing for the state, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Thursday, because it will give voters a chance to approve reforms that could stop another fiscal emergency from happening again.
  • And that raises this question: Will the money that federal and state politicians are shoveling out under the rubric of "stimulus" actually have a material impact on what appears to be the worst recession to hit California since the Great Depression?
  • The conservative blogosphere has had a field day with the revelation of a secret liberal media e-mail group called "JournoList," and the latest inside scoop from Slate's Mickey Kaus prompted this remark from blogger Jeff Goldstein:

    Think "Woodward and Bernstein bring down Nixon," only replace "Woodward and Bernstein bring down Nixon" with "A bunch of guys who were beaten up daily in junior high show why they almost certainly had it coming."

    Dead on target. A plague of neurasthenia has wussified the news business.

    (tags: JournoList)