Southwest Airlines drops 15 Cities

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

DALLAS — Southwest Airlines Co. said Friday that it would keep flying to 22 cities served by AirTran Airways but end flights to six others — raising the final cut list to 15 AirTran locations — as it combines the two airlines.

The dropped cities are smaller than typical Southwest markets and include Allentown, Pa., and Sarasota, Fla. Southwest said it couldn’t afford to serve such markets with today’s high jet fuel prices.

The decision ended months of suspense after Southwest bought AirTran in May. AirTran served 69 cities, including many also served by Southwest.

Besides the overlapping cities, the 22 non-Southwest destinations that the company will keep include airports in Mexico, the Caribbean and the Midwest and eastern half of the United States. Among them: Charlotte, N.C.; Memphis, Tenn., and Richmond, Va.

Outside the U.S., the airline will serve Cancun, Mexico; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Punta Cana, Dominican Republic; Montego Bay, Jamaica; Aruba; Bermuda; and Nassau, Bahamas. It will also keep Mexico City, where AirTran plans to begin flying in May, and San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, where AirTran has set a June launch.

From: http://ping.fm/Xa9IW

Best Cat Video of the Year #8

This is sweet tender cat mom love!

Best Cat Video of the Year #9

A very cute cat, and the owners were very well trained by the kitty to do exactly what he wants them to do for his…pure entertainment.

Iran to hold war game to close Strait of Hormuz: MP – Tehran Times

TEHRAN – MP Parviz Sorouri of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee has said that Iran plans to practice its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically important chokepoints, which accounts for about 30% of the world’s seaborne oil shipments.

“Currently, the Middle East region supplies 70 percent of the world’s energy needs, (most of) which are transported through the Strait of Hormuz. We will hold an exercise to close the Strait of Hormuz in the near future. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure,” ISNA quoted Sorouri as saying on Tuesday.

From: Ping.fm from the Tehran Times

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DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security

Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

As the US completes its final withdrawal from Iraq, American special forces troops have been diverted to positions in Jordan opposite a Syrian tank concentration building up across the kingdom’s northern border, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report.
As of last Thursday, as of last Thursday Dec. 8, military convoys, air transports and helicopters have been lifting US troops across the border from Iraq. They have been deployed in position to ward off a possible Syrian invasion in the light of President Bashar Assad’s warning that he would set the entire Middle East on fire if the pressure on his regime to step down persisted.

Syria’s other neighbors have taken precautions against this contingency but this is the first time US boots have hit the ground directly opposite Assad’s army.
The incoming US contingents are disclosed by our sources as having been housed at the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq, 10 kilometers from the Syrian border. US troops were sighted Monday, Dec. 12, building surveillance towers and army posts in the Jordanian villages of Albaej, Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah al-Houshah as well as near the Sarham dam of the Yarmoukh River which runs down the international border between Syria and Jordan.
Three months ago, the Syrian ruler cautioned Jordan’s King Abdullah II to stop granting asylum to Syrian military deserters and allowing his country to serve as a conduit for pumping arms to the opposition.
The king was not deterred by this threat. Seen from Damascus, Jordan would be easier to take on militarily that either Turkey or Israel. Saturday, Dec. 12, Jordanian surveillance units confirmed that Syrian armored units were gathering opposite the Jordanian town of Bura Al Hariri.
Iraqi sources report that the American units came from the big Iraqi Ain al-Assad air base in the western province of Al Anbar opposite the Jordanian border. This base is in the process of evacuation as the US military drawdown in Iraq approaches completion. Most of the troops are flown to US bases in the Persian Gulf and Europe.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, when he met US President Barack Obama at the White House Monday, approved the transfer of American contingents from Iraq to Jordan across their common border. Obama was therefore able to state after their talks: “We share the view that when the Syrian people are being killed or are unable to express themselves that’s a problem. There’s no disagreement there.”
By this comment, the White House sought to stress that the Baghdad government is not letting Tehran twist its arms on the Syrian question.

From: http://ping.fm/UUDmw

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U.S. Hate Groups Top 1,000 | Southern Poverty Law Center

The number of active hate groups in the United States topped 1,000 for the first time and the antigovernment “Patriot” movement expanded dramatically for the second straight year as the radical right showed continued explosive growth in 2010.

Several factors fueled the growth: resentment over the changing racial demographics of the country, frustration over the lagging economy, and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories and other demonizing propaganda aimed at minorities and the government.

The report is in the Spring 2011 issue of the SPLC’s quarterly investigative journal Intelligence Report. The Hate Map also contains a comprehensive, state-by-state listing of hate groups and their locations.
“Far-right extremists remain highly energized, even as politicians across the country co-opt many of the radical ideas and issues that are important to them,” said Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report. “This success in having their voices heard in the political arena, where they have long occupied the fringe of conservative thought, might eventually take the wind out of their sails, but so far we’re not seeing any sign of that.”

In an 11-day period this January, a neo-Nazi was arrested as he headed for the Arizona border with a dozen homemade grenades; a terrorist bomb attack on a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Wash., was averted when police dismantled a sophisticated bomb; and a man who officials said had a long history of antigovernment activities was arrested in a car filled with explosives outside a packed mosque in Dearborn, Mich.

That’s in addition to the attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, an attack that left six dead that same month. The assailant appeared to be severely mentally ill, but he also seemed to have absorbed certain ideas from the radical right, including the notion that the federal government is evil.

Last May, two police officers in West Memphis, Ark., were murdered when they stopped a van driven by a father-son team from the “sovereign citizens” movement, part of the larger Patriot movement. Eight law enforcement officers have been killed by radical-right extremists since President Obama was elected.

The hate groups listed in this report include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, Klansmen and black separatists. Other hate groups on the list target gays or immigrants, and some specialize in producing racist music or propaganda denying the Holocaust.

From: http://ping.fm/lor9U

This Is Only Just The Beginning

For a long time, there have been those that have warned that economic riots are coming to this nation. Anger and frustration with the economy and with our financial system have grown to unprecedented levels, and this has fueled the rise of the various protest movements that we have seen over the last couple of years. People are fed up and they want solutions. Unfortunately, anger and frustration can express themselves in dangerous and unpredictable ways. What we have seen in Oakland, in Seattle and in other major U.S. cities this week is only just the beginning of the massive economic riots that are coming to this country. Yes, “anarchists” were responsible for quite a bit of the violence that we have seen this week, but they were not the only ones involved. Some protesters were getting violent too, and there has also been quite a bit of police brutality. Of course the vast majority of Occupy Wall Street protesters do not want anything to do with violence and they recognize that violence is not the answer.
But that is the thing with anger and frustration. It is hard to contain them in neat, self-disciplined packages. As the economy continues to get worse, the protests will grow and unfortunately so will the violence. You can preach the benefits of non-violence all day long to some people but they just will not get it. America has reached a turning point, and what we are seeing now is only just the beginning of the madness. In the years ahead we are going to see rioting that is going to be absolutely unprecedented.

According to a recent Associated Press-GfK poll, 43 percent of all Americans believe that the economy is in “very poor” shape. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, millions of Americans have lost their homes and tens of millions of Americans have been sickened by what they have seen happen on Wall Street over the last four or five years. It is easy to understand why people are frustrated and are marching in the streets. As I wrote about yesterday, approximately one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps. Poverty is rapidly spreading and large numbers of families have lost everything. People want answers, and it is understandable why so many are joining these protest movements.

Over the last couple of years, people such as Gerald Celente and myself have been warning that economic riots are coming. Those of us that have written about such things have been called “doom and gloomers” and “conspiracy theorists”.

But after the events of the last couple of months, almost everyone is starting to realize that something big is happening.

On Wednesday, huge crowds of protesters brought the city of Oakland, California to a standstill. Some media organizations said that there were 5,000 protesters, but others claimed that there may have been up to 20,000 people marching at one point.

A group of approximately 3,000 protesters marched over and shut down the Port of Oakland, which is the fifth largest deepwater port in the United States.

In other areas of the city, windows were smashed, graffiti was sprayed on buildings and senseless acts of vandalism were committed. There were also quite a few intense confrontations with police and dozens of protesters ended up getting arrested.

From: http://ping.fm/UuK9j

Market Horror: Drug-resistant Bacteria found in US Meat

Investigators in the United States found severe high levels of the bacteria Staphylococcus Aureus in meat that is easily found on any U.S. grocery store shelves, and the horror of it is than more than half of that meat has the kind of Staphylococcus that is resistant to many different strong new generation kind of antibiotics.

The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGRI) examined 136 meat samples from 26 grocery stores in Illinois, Florida, California, Arizona and Washington D.C. and all of them came positive.

If you live in Mexico and you usually buy American meat, well DON’T anymore! You go to your market of your choice and ask for 100% Mexican meat brought from Sonora, Baja California Norte (Tijuana or Mexicali. Make sure the tag says: HECHO EN MEXICO (Made in Mexico) to assure yourself you are buying clean healthy meat.

“FDA has been monitoring the situation. The TGRI study points out that the public health relevance of the findings is unclear. FDA continues to work with CDC and USDA to better understand this issue,” the FDA spokeswoman said.

US Medical Emergency Preparedness in Dire Conditions

Budget Cuts Threaten Post-9/11 Gains

More than three-quarters of states met at least seven of the 10 indicators, but Levi warned that budget cuts at the national, state, and local level may have already impacted readiness to respond to public health emergencies such as disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or acts of terrorism that impact public health.

Among the ominous signs:

33 states and Washington, D.C., cut funding for public health last year, and 18 states cut funding for the second year in a row. Georgia decreased funding the most by almost 35%, followed by Arizona and the
District of Columbia, which cut funding by 23% and 18%, respectively.

Since 2008, 15% of public health work force has been cut at 2,700 health departments across the country.

In addition to cutting staff, many state and local governments have instituted work furloughs, hiring freezes, and shorter workweeks to address budget shortfalls.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans live in areas where local health departments have fewer employees than they did before the recession began.

SOURCES:

Salynn Boyles is a staff writer at WebMD.

“Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism,” Trust for America’s Heath and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Jeffrey Levi, PhD, executive director, Trust for America’s Health.

James S. Blumenstock, chief program officer, Public Health Practice, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Dream Act or Nightmare Pact?

I am pleased to know that the Dream Act died on the Senate floor Saturday morning, and I hope that’s the end of it.

The Dream Act, a bill to provide a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants who entered the United States before age 16, died on the Senate floor on Saturday morning.

Why should United States have to facilitate the path to citizenship to illegal immigrants when in any other country of the world foreigners have to follow the rules before entering a country. Children of illegal immigrants who were brought illegally by their parents should go back to their county with their parents.

The failure of the Dream Act gives more ammunition to Hispanic leaders who have begun to publicly wonder why Democrats have failed to move forward on their priorities. It appears unlikely that many will move toward Republicans, however, in light of widespread support in the GOP for the controversial Arizona immigration law as well as the rhetoric from some Republicans on “birthright citizenship” and other immigration-related matters.

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