1. Immediately Approve Keystone Pipeline
2. Introduce Tax Cuts & Reforms
3. Order Replacement of Obamacare

A customer at an Arby’s in Michigan got a little more than roast beef in his sandwich last week when he bit into a piece of a finger, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reports.

Ryan Hart, 14, tells the newspaper he was almost done with the sandwich when he tasted something rubbery. He spat it out and saw the back of a finger extending beyond the first knuckle. His reaction: “I was “about to puke. … It was just nasty.”

Steve Hall, environmental health director for the Jackson County Health Department, tells the Citizen Patriot an Arby’s employee had sliced her finger while operating a meat slicer and left her station without immediately telling anyone what happened. Other workers were filling an order before they became aware of the situation, Hall says.

The restaurant did not close.

via Teen finds finger in Arby’s sandwich.

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

The booklet, which was distributed to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.

It also promotes Obama’s anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White–which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.

Obama’s biography in the booklet is as follows (image and text below):

Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.   He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.

The booklet, which is thirty-six pages long, is printed in blue ink (and, on the cover, silver/grey ink), using offset lithography. It purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel, which was founded in 1976.

I’m pretty much indifferent to whether Obama was born in Kenya; three years down the road, it really doesn’t matter. But, it’s interesting to see continual discoveries of the web of lies that has been spun around this man. If he wasn’t born in Kenya, why would he claim it? Perhaps he’s looking for that same “inclusion advantage” that the Cherokee Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren was seeking when applying to Harvard.

Read the rest

A Detroit groundskeeper, who turned in a loaded handgun he found hidden in weeds while working, was fired by the Wayne County Department of Public Services, MyFoxDetroit.com reports.

John Chevilott, who is just two years shy of retirement, found the loaded snub-nosed revolver on May 3 when he and his crew were mowing a lawn in Wayne County. Chevilott secured the gun, waiting for police to drive by so he could hand it over to them.

But, according to the station, the Detroit police never did pass by, so Chevilott finished his work that day, drove the gun home and later that same evening turned it into his local police department.

He says the cops ran the gun and discovered the weapon had been stolen from St. Clair Shores in 2005.

“They said I did the right thing getting it off the street,” Chevilott told MyFoxDetroit.com.

However, Chevilott’s superiors at the Wayne County Department of Public Services had a much different opinion. His foreman, who had knowledge of the situation, was suspended for 30 days, and after 23 years on the job, Chevilott was fired for violating department policies.

Read the whole thing

Mitt Romney has moved out to an eight-point lead over President Obama in North Carolina after the two men were virtually tied a month ago.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Tar Heel State shows the putative Republican nominee earning 51% of the vote to Obama’s 43%. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

That’s a big change from last month when Romney posted a narrow 46% to 44% lead over the president in Rasmussen Reports’ first survey of the race in North Carolina.  Democrats have signaled North Carolina’s importance as a key swing state by deciding to hold their national convention in Charlotte this summer.

Romney has held a slight lead over the president nationally for over a week now in the daily Presidential Tracking Poll following the release of a disappointing jobs report for April.

Voters nationally regard the economy as far and away the most  important issue in the upcoming election, and just 11% of North Carolina voters now describe the U.S. economy as good or excellent. Forty-seven percent (47%) rate it as poor. Thirty-one percent (31%) say the economy is getting better, but 41% think it is getting worse.

The president leads overwhelmingly among those who give the economy positive marks, while Romney is far ahead among the much larger group that views the economy as poor.

Eighty-eight percent (88%) of North Carolina Republicans now support Romney, compared to 76% of Democrats in the state who back Obama. Nearly one-in-five North Carolina Democrats (18%) now favor the Republican. The GOP challenger holds a modest 49% to 45% lead among voters not affiliated with either party, but the two men were tied with 38% support each among this group a month ago.

via Election 2012: North Carolina President – Rasmussen Reports™.

Planet Earth in a tight spot.

Mankind is draining the earth’s resources so quickly the globe would be bled dry before the end of the century at this rate, a new report shows.

Humans are living outside their means, depleting natural resources like forests, air and water 50% faster than the planet can renew, according to the 2012 World Wildlife Fund’s “Living Planet Report” released this month.

If the trends aren’t reversed, by 2030 we’d need more than two Planet Earths to sustain human activity, according to the study.

“If we just do business as usual…we’re just going to continue moving in this direction. At some point, the earth’s going to just give out. We don’t know when. But that’s a pretty scary thing to think about,” said Colby Loucks, director of conservation science at WWF. “The question is, we don’t know what the tipping point is.”

Read more at the NY Daily News 

Here’s one I got today. I would submit to you that Romney’s campaign doesn’t need to answer that highlighted question. The more important question to answer is “how would your administration be different from Barack Obama’s?” That’s easy, and an answer the Dems don’t want to hear.

Now, this: The German federal government has banned banks from financing offshore wind farms. If the banks can’t finance those losing propositions, who will? Hope they haven’t shut too many of the nukes down.

(H/T Climate Change Dispatch and Soylent Green)

Go Donald, go!

JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss is top news nationwide. But over at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), such losses are business as usual. USPS reported a typical (for it) $3.2 billion loss for the most recent quarter. Try that comparison on for size.

JPMorgan Chase incurred a “whale” of a loss because, as explained by the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon to his investors, this is an example of a “flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored” betting strategy. Despite the loss, it by no means spells doom for the bank. The bank has more than enough capital to stomach these losses, as painful as they are. JPMorgan Chase’s actions led to the loss, and JPMorgan Chase’s actions will fix it. You can bet it is already doing just that.

Commentators will be tempted to say this could not have happened if regulations intended to guard against risky trading, such as the Volcker Rule, were in place. Not true. The trading strategy JPMorgan Chase used is legal, and it would still be legal under the Volcker Rule. In a free-market system, banks as well as businesses are free to take risks, which result in either successes or failures, profits or losses. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already begun an investigation of the bank’s financial disclosures, but the bottom line is that mistakes like this do and must happen, in banking as well as other industries where risk is part of the business.

Meanwhile, over at the Post Office, a $3.2 billion loss has become a frighteningly regular occurrence:

USPS Posts $5.4 B (2007)Loss; Governors Undecided on Rate Hike

USPS Reports $2.8 Billion Loss for 2008

USPS posts $3.8b loss in 2009

USPS sees $8.5 billion loss, warns Congress it’ll be broke by 2011

Postal Service Ends Fiscal Year 2011 with $5.1 Billion Loss

US Postal Service loses $3.2 billion in Jan-March (just one quarter)

 

If you’d like to read more about the Postal Service’s ongoing financial and management problems, Downsizing Government is a good source.