"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," Dudley said in Queens, Reuters reports. "You have to look at the price of all things."

But better iPads don't put food on the table, audience members reminded him. "When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one person asked. And, perhaps most succinctly, another told him, "I can't eat an iPad." link

This is their latest update from the road:

Hello from Rajasthan, India!

We hope this email finds you very well. Our trip through India brings us to the northern state of Rajasthan. While in Delhi we decided to rent a Royal Enfield motorcycle to tour this region for the next month.

Our motorcycle is heavily loaded with our two backpacks bungeed to the sides, plus our food bag.  So far we are loving the freedom the motorcycle gives us. First stop was the Taj Mahal.  From there we headed toward Fatehpur Sikri and are now enjoying the Pink City of Jaipur.

Tomorrow we head out to Rathambore National Park for a tiger safari.

Rich put together a video of our first few days on the bike.  Hope you enjoy it! (LINK)

Major is very very intelligent but he tends to accidentally bump into to Josh and almost send him sprawling.  So after much talk with others who breed service dogs it was decided that a Standard Poodle would most likely be a dog better suited for Joshua.  Major is my dog now even though Joshua helped with everything since the day he was born, he always whines for me anyhow.  And I talked Joshua into getting a female poodle because it will likely bond more closely to him like Major cries for me and Digby and Auburn follow my husband everywhere he goes.

Carl Paladino's campaign stiffed about a dozen consultants, vendors and staff members for some $130,000 in salaries, fees and expenses, according to numerous veterans of his failed gubernatorial bid.

They are pressing for payment from a campaign committee, Paladino for the People, that is deep in debt. Public records show the committee has a balance of only $5,305 and debts of $6.1 million, most of them loans from the candidate.

M&I Bank is the largest bank in Wisconsin, and was the recipient of $1.7 billion in TARP bailout money from the federal government. The bundled contributions from M&I executives were Walker's second-largest source of campaign funds. According to records provided by the Sunlight Foundation, executives at M&I Bank gave $46,308 to Walker's campaign. And now, a group of local unions in Wisconsin have threatened to pull their money from M&I Bank unless it denounces Scott Walker's attack on workers' rights.

"Walker and his henchmen in the GOP have chosen to ignore the people of Wisconsin, but we all know now that they will listen to their big money donors," says factory worker David Goodspeed, a member of Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 565. "This is an opportunity for donors like M&I to be good corporate citizens and do what's right for the citizens who bailed them out."

On Thursday morning, several hundred protesters surrounded an M&I Bank across the street from the Wisconsin State Capitol shouting "You Got Bailed Out, We Got Sold Out."  International Association of Fire Fighters Local 311 President Joe Conway Jr. told me two union members marched in and pulled a combined $192,000 dollars out of the bank. "Hopefully this sends a message to the bank," says Conway. "We wanted to illustrate how serious our threat is by having just two of our members pull their money out. " The union said it plans to escalate actions and will soon begin handing out flyers at protests asking people to move their money.

A senior union researcher estimates that unions have at least $1 billion invested in M&I Bank, mostly through pension funds. Discussions are going on at the highest levels of the labor movement about how exactly to leverage this financial clout in the political debate in Wisconsin. Since the Bank of Montreal is in process of purchasing M&I Bank, US unions have reached out to the Canadian Labour Congress to urge their involvement in a disinvestment campaign.

It is, oddly enough, the same lingo they used to describe the horrific BP oil spill in the Gulf.

The reactors were first described as "troubled" and now are described as "stricken".

This argues, in my opinion, for the usage of the vocabulary of the streets. It would tell us more if they would just say that things were fked up - or royally fked up.

The city of Boston has apparently inhereted an italian estate.

"When Visocchi died this past summer at the age of 62, he honored the city his family loved. In his last will and testament, he named Boston as the heir to his estate, which an Italian newspaper estimated at $700,000 plus a house and other property.

Good news, right? But there's a catch.

   "What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty," the potential GOP presidential candidate said. "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history." [...]

    "I'm thankful that you are the first in the nation state because you are the liberty state," Bachmann said. "That is your charge. You keep that baton of liberty. You've done it very well for almost 20 generations from the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and I'm sure the very first one came up to New Hampshire and said, `This is where I want to be.'"

I mean if the Top 25 21-11 Johnnies, with wins over Duke, Pitt, and assorted top tens are undeserving you must be talking about some 16 team tournament I am unfamilar with...but ya had a good rant going up until that point Don:)

Robinson today in court set Bloch's sentencing for March 30, giving the lawyers a chance to file more court papers addressing why Robinson should let Bloch start over. Prosecutors have not opposed Bloch's effort to withdraw his guilty plea.

More than ever, consumers are sending a message to businesses that they are watching. They are watching to see if the businesses they patronize understand and honor issues important to them, giving buying power to issues ranging from LGBT inclusiveness to environmental protection. Corporate social responsibility has become an imperative for a successful business. With Buying for Workplace Equality, we hope to harness that power by providing you with the most accurate review of a business's workplace policies toward LGBT employees.

and it turns out its useful for the World Nut Daily crowd as well:

HOMOSEXODUS!

American companies that don't promote 'gayness'
From cars to food to entertainment, see firms not pushing LGBT agenda

With a nuclear emergency under way in Japan, nuclear power advocates in the United States have lost one of their key talking points. And that includes President Barack Obama.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in October 2009, Obama specifically cited Japan as a model for America's nuclear renaissance. "There's no reason why, technologically, we can't employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way," Obama said. "Japan does it and France does it, and it doesn't have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way."

Nuclear power is part of the "clean energy standard" that Obama outlined in his State of the Union speech in January. And in the 2011 budget, the administration called for a three-fold increase in federal loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants, from the $18.5 billion that Congress has already approved to $54.5 billion. "We are aggressively pursuing nuclear energy," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu in February 2010 as he unveiled the budget.

The administration isn't backing off its support for nuclear, despite the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan. In Monday's White House press briefing, press secretary Jay Carney said that nuclear energy "remains a part of the president's overall energy plan."

Now, we have a novel use of the word, "contentious".

Here 'tis:

But the situation a reactor No. 3 was being closely watched for another reason. That reactor uses a special mix of nuclear fuel known as MOX fuel. MOX is considered contentious because it is made with reprocessed plutonium and uranium oxides. Any radioactive plume from that fuel would be more dangerous than ordinary nuclear fuel, experts say, because inhaling plutonium even in very small quantities is considered lethal.