bigpoppanils

VW showed a 282mpg concept about 3 years ago. VW looked into mass production of it, but killed the program when the Phaeton and Bugatti Veyron programs went over budget.

VW's Lupo turbodiesel gets 80mpg on the highway. GM and VW recently showed diesel-electric hybrid concepts which averaged around 90mpg.

i like.

Official: Ukraine sold missiles to Iran, China
By Aleksandar Vasovic
The Associated Press
KIEV, Ukraine — A senior lawmaker yesterday called for Ukraine's prosecutor-general to investigate alleged sales of nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in violation of international nonproliferation treaties.
The appeal, by Hrihory Omelchenko, follows allegations he made in a letter to new President Viktor Yushchenko. Omelchenko is a parliament member and is a reserve colonel in Ukraine's intelligence service.
Yushchenko, who succeeded Leonid Kuchma, has promised a thorough investigation of corruption and misdeeds that allegedly flourished during his predecessor's 10 years as president. Kuchma allegedly sanctioned the sale of sophisticated radar systems to Iraq in 2002, violating U.N. sanctions.
In his letter to Yushchenko, Omelchenko said an investigation launched last summer "proved that some 20 air-launched Kh-55 and Kh-55M cruise missiles with nuclear capability were exported to third countries" in violation of international treaties.
"Six missiles destined for Russia ended up in Iran ... six missiles destined for Russia ended up in China," the letter said. It said the sales occurred in 2000-01.
Iranian diplomats in Kiev were not available for comment.
In the early 1990s, Ukraine renounced the nuclear armaments it inherited in the breakup of the Soviet Union and said it shipped all of its nuclear warheads to Russia for decommissioning under U.S. control.
The country remains a sizable producer of weapons, including missiles, aircraft and tanks. Exports are largely to other former Soviet republics, Asia and Africa.
Last year Ukrainian police arrested four men from Greece, Pakistan and Iraq on suspicion of attempted illegal weapons trade worth more than $800 million for an unspecified force fighting in Iraq.
In March 2004, former Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk warned that several hundred Soviet-built SA-2 surface-to-air missiles were unaccounted for.
Defense officials later claimed that these missiles from arsenals in former Warsaw Pact member countries had been taken to Ukraine for decommissioning and were lost due to "accounting problems" and "the absence of records."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002168929_ukraine03.html

http://www.theonion.com/wdyt/index.php?issue=4104
Ted Ramos
Upholsterer
"Great. Now the public face of U.S. diplomacy is that of a pissed-off terrier."
Michael Shaw
Systems Analyst
"Ms. Rice should make an ideal Secretary of State. She's already proved to the U.S. that she can evade questions in front of a Congressional panel."
Colleen Burns
Appraiser
"I say, why not give Condi a shot as Secretary of State? It might help her self-esteem and encourage her to start taking an interest in her appearance."
Peter Swain
Unemployed
"The implications are profound. She's paved the way for a black female to perform with the Capitol Steps."
Gregory Gordon
Cashier
"So she had to explain why she's the best candidate for the job? Big deal. I had to do that last week when I applied at Panda Express."
Joy Mattingly
Designer
"Twenty years ago, I never would've believed that we'd have a black, female Secretary of State, much less one who was a conservative warmonger, too. We've come a long way."

What do you guys think of this idiot? Don't hold back! I know many of you will turn on me for this poll but this is drama the home of the brave and the disturbed...

please die.

i think i'm going to go witht he South Beach Plaza (14th and collins). the reviews on travelocity are pretty good

http://media.ebaumsworld.com/sexualharassment.wmv
"it smells like vagina in here!"

http://www.liebography.com/ipod.htm

well there goes 5 minutes of my life i cant get back

today my parents traded in the saab for a new E320
they went to the dealer just to look at the E and C class cars. However, upon hearing that the saab lease ends in may, the dealer offered to buy out the remaining term.
i'm looking forward to driving it.

sorry, but

I dont really like h&m very much.
a new one opened by my job (58th and lex). the jeans there are pricey considering the quality ($50 a pair...same for courderoys). i'd rather spend that money at the Zara or Levis stores across the street.

the only good M5 is a wrecked M5, imo

Revolution In Reverse
In solidifying its power, the GOP is loosening its ethics.
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, November 19, 2004; Page A29
"And I want to say to you bluntly: You live today with the most corrupt congressional leadership we have seen in the United States in the 20th century. You have to go back to the Gilded Age of the 1870s and 1880s to have anything comparable that we've lived through."
Gosh, those Democrats must be really bitter about this year's elections to say stuff like that. Isn't it time to put aside partisan invective?
But however appropriate that ringing indictment may seem to the moment, it did not issue from any Democrat this week. The words were spoken in February 1992 by a House Republican named Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was then building the momentum that led to the historic Republican takeover of Congress two years later. The GOP modestly called what it was up to a "revolution."
As the old rock song taught us: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
What's surprising is how shameless House Republicans were on Wednesday in casting aside their 11-year-old rule requiring a member of their leadership to step aside temporarily if he or she comes under indictment.
The repeal might be called the Tom DeLay Protection Act of 2004. DeLay, the House majority leader, is under investigation by Ronnie Earle, the district attorney in Texas's Travis County. Earle, who is a Democrat, is investigating charges that corporate money was used illegally to help Republicans win Texas legislative races in 2002. Republican victories that year paved the way for changes in the state's congressional district lines that helped Republicans win additional U.S. House seats in Texas this year, solidifying their hold on power.
Earle has already obtained indictments against three of DeLay's political associates. The Hammer, as DeLay is known, must be worried.
Recall how Republicans dismissed any and all who charged that the investigations of President Bill Clinton by special prosecutor Ken Starr were politically motivated. Ah, but those were investigations of a shady Democrat by a distinguished Republican. When a Democrat is investigating a Republican, it can only be about politics. Is that clear?
Rep. Henry Bonilla, the Texas Republican who sponsored the resolution to protect DeLay, said it was designed to protect against "crackpot" prosecutors whose indictments might get in the way of the ability of House Republicans to choose their own leaders. Can't let a little thing like an indictment get in the way of the sovereignty of House Republicans, can we?
"Attorneys tell me you can be indicted for just about anything in this country," said Bonilla. Remember the old days during the Clinton impeachment when Republicans went on and on about the importance of "the rule of law"? Oh well.
DeLay's response to the whole thing came, almost word for word, from Clinton's old talking points. "We must stop the politics of personal destruction," Clinton said in December 1998 after the House impeachment vote that DeLay had rammed through. On Wednesday, DeLay said that Democrats "announced years ago that they were going to engage in the politics of personal destruction, and had me as a target." Maybe it's time for Bill and Tom to sit down at that big new library in Little Rock for a friendly drink.
About the only defense Republicans can make for repealing their rule on indicted leaders is that the original motivation for passing it in 1993 was blatantly political. Republicans were trying to make hay over an investigation of Dan Rostenkowski, an Illinois Democrat who was then chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Rostenkowski was later convicted of mail fraud. If politics was behind the rule in the first place, why not be political now that the rule is inconvenient? Isn't this a case of admirable consistency?
Some Republicans, at least, remember what they stood for 10 years ago. "We took a strong stand in 1994 to make clear the Republican conference would live by a higher standard than our Democratic colleagues," Rep. Chris Shays, a Connecticut Republican, said in a statement. Shays also told reporters: "We won election in '94 because we were going to be different, and what I continue to see is a slow but very consistent erosion in what made us different."
Shays reminds us that when and he and Gingrich were in the opposition, they gave voice to many who worried about the dangers of an entrenched majority that came to assume it had a right to power and could do whatever was necessary to keep it. Gingrich's line about the Gilded Age just may have come 12 years too early. You don't have to be a crackpot to believe that the Gilded Age is now.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61374-2004Nov18.html?sub=AR

kerry. I dont like him very much, but I am voting for him for two reasons:
1. I see a kerry victory as being good for the economy and the budget. Now I know y'all are thinking "But kerry wants to raise taxes!". Yes Kerry wants to raise taxes on the "rich", but it doesnt matter. The GOP will remain in control of Congress. I highly doubt that the GOP will vote to increase taxes, especially on the rich. In fact, most of Kerry's big ticket proposals will not pass Congress. Likewise, having a Democrat in office will halt most of the GOP's big ticket items (like that horrible highway bill). What we may finally have is corporate tax reform, which will be good for the economy.
2. A vote for Bush is a vote for Ashcroft, Cheney, Rumsfield, Karl Rove, Wolfowitz, and the other various asshats that are in the current administration. I want them out.

Mr. President, you're blowing it
Surely we're not that dumb
By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/columnists/molly_ivins/9916210.htm
President Bush may not be dumb, but he sure does think the rest of us are.
You have to assume that your audience is a bunch of borderline morons to tell as many whoppers as he does. True, short-term memory loss is creeping up on a lot of us, but even I can remember what Bush told us about why we had to invade Iraq.
There was about a rationale a week, but the main contenders were because (A.) Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and (B.) links to al Qaeda, so the WMD might get into terrorist hands.
The supposed Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda connection was so often trumpeted that by the time the war started, 70 percent of Americans believed that Saddam was behind 9-11.
Last week, Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had never seen any credible evidence of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.
Last week, the Duelfer report, written by our top weapons inspector, said that Saddam not only had no weapons of mass destruction but also that most of them had been destroyed shortly after the Persian Gulf War.
The report also said that both the U.N. inspections and the sanctions against Iraq had been resoundingly successful -- that Saddam was becoming weaker and weaker. This is the report that Bush had the cheek to quote during the debate last week as a source for his contention that Saddam had the "means, materials and intent" to develop WMD.
The Duelfer report specifically shows that Iraq had neither the means nor the materials and that Saddam was slipping ever further away from his intent to create same. How dumb does Bush think we are?
I especially enjoyed this gem: "And yet think where we are. Added 1.9 million new jobs in the last 13 months." Excuse me? The new employment numbers came out just before the debate -- 95,000 new jobs last month, not even enough to keep up with the 150,000 newbies who come into the labor market every month.
In other words, a net job loss of 55,000 in September, for a grand total of nearly 1 million jobs lost under Bush. How dumb does Bush think we are?
Also in the lies/damn lies category, how nice that 75 percent of "key members" of al Qaeda have been captured, according to Bush. According to independent terrorism experts, the figure has no meaning at all.
As detailed in intelligence reports from around the globe, al Qaeda has gained strength since 9-11, with our invasion of Iraq acting as its recruiting poster. Further, the network is now more widespread and contains more discrete cells, so the leadership is all over the world. What we need most to catch them is the cooperation of other nations (see below).
At one point during the debate, Bush shot out of his seat, so eager was he to point out the terrible blunder by Kerry in failing to acknowledge the contribution of Britain and Poland in Iraq.
How dreadful, scolded Bush. How do you think you're going to get any allies to go along with you in the future if you don't even acknowledge their help?
How right he is! And how well he should know. Bush quite notoriously failed to thank any of our allies in the Afghan war during his triumphal 2002 State of the Union Address -- an insult that left the parties in question quite frosty.
I'm not saying that's why France and Germany wouldn't go along with us in Iraq -- they may have had a few other reasons -- but NATO did send another 3,500 troops just to help with the Afghan election. Always nice to see George W. Bush giving someone else lessons in diplomatic politesse and finesse.
My favorite Bush line: "Freedom is on the march. Tomorrow, Afghanistan will be voting for a president. And Iraq will be having free elections."
Elections were held in Afghanistan under U.N. supervision (see above for helpful advice on being courteous), and reports suggest that it went well. Glad to hear it and about time something did, since the warlords are still in charge of most of the country and opium production is at record high levels.
And freedom is on the march in Iraq, all right. According to Bush, a few remnants of the Baath Party and some international terrorists are responsible for all the suicide bombers, car bombs, mines, rocket attacks, etc.
According to our own polls, 86 percent of Iraqis want us out of there either yesterday or ASAP. The insurgency is growing by the day.
How dumb does Bush think we are?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045

it took you 5 whole days to come up with that huh?

i'm voting for Kodos.

Pulling Back the Curtain: What a Top Reporter in Baghdad Really Thinks About the War
Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi confirms that she penned a scathing letter that calls the war in Iraq an outright "disaster." She also reveals that reporters in Baghdad are working under "virtual house arrest."
By Greg Mitchell
(September 29, 2004) -- Readers of any nailbiting story from Iraq in a major mainstream newspaper must often wonder what the dispassionate reporter really thinks about the chaotic situation there, and what he or she might be saying in private letters or in conversations with friends back home.
Now, at least in the case of Wall Street Journal correspondent Farnaz Fassihi, we know.
A lengthy letter from Baghdad she recently sent to friends "has rapidly become a global chain mail," Fassihi told Jim Romenesko on Wednesday after it was finally posted at the Poynter Institute's Web site. She confirmed writing the letter.
"Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity," Fassihi wrote (among much else) in the letter. "Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler." And: "Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come."
After she confirmed writing the letter on Wednesday, Paul Steiger, editor of the Wall Street Journal, stood up for her, telling the New York Post that her "private opinions have in no way distorted her coverage, which has been a model of intelligent and courageous reporting, and scrupulous accuracy and fairness."
Fassihi, 32, covered the 9/11 terror attacks in New York for the The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. and has also worked for the Providence Journal.
The reporter's letter opens with this revelation: "Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons.
"I am house bound.... There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second."
Fassihi observed that the insurgency had spread "from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq." The Iraqi government, he wrote, "doesn't control most Iraqi cities.... The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health--which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers--has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.
"A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq."
For journalists, Fassihi wrote, "the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood....
"The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day.
"I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathists to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive."
And what of America's "hope for a quick exit"? Fassihi noted that "cops are being murdered by the dozens every day, over 700 to date, and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly....
"Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?
"I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad...."
Making clear what can only, at best, appear between lines in her published dispatches, Fassihi concluded, "One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle."
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is the editor of E&P and the author of seven books on politics and history.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000650551

oh nevermind....

some went to rhythmism

are you getting a water filter for the sink? just curious