2,400 acres burned in Santa Cruz Mountains fire

August 13, 2009
1630z
UNISYS Water Vapor GOES West Satellite (click for 12 hour loop here)

No relief in sight.


That is as of today (click here).

A wildfire that began Wednesday evening, Aug. 13, 2009 in the Santa Cruz Mountains quickly burned 1,000 acres and was threatening 250 structures. (Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel)

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is in Abkhazia. Russia is not about to allow Georgia to disturb these people.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Abkhazia on Wednesday for a one-day working visit, confirming Moscow's pledges of financial aid to the former Georgian republic.

Georgia Blast Kills 2 During Putin Visit (click here)
By VOA News 13 August 2009
Russian news reports say two people were killed and several others wounded in a bomb blast in Abkhazia during Wednesday's visit by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.Mr. Putin's one-day trip to the Georgian breakaway territory was the first by a top Russian official since Moscow last year recognized Abkhazia's independence after the five-day Russian-Georgian war. The reports quote authorities as saying the blast in the resort town of Gagra killed a 52-year-old woman and wounded four others. A second victim died later in a hospital.Authorities say no one was hurt in the second blast, which occurred in the Abkhaz capital, Sukhumi, shortly after Mr. Putin departed the city and returned to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Medvedev Says Georgian Army Buildup Causes ‘Concern’ (Update1) (click here)
By Torrey Clark, Helena Bedwell and Denis Maternovsky
Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Georgia’s actions, including a troop buildup on the borders of two separatist Georgian regions, are cause for “serious concern” a year after a war between the two countries.
“Georgia’s actions continue to cause serious concern, from the unceasing threats to restore its ‘territorial integrity’ by force and daily warlike rhetoric to its concentration of armed forces on the borders with South Ossetia and Abkhazia and serious provocations in border areas,” Medvedev said in a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Excerpts from the letter were posted today on the Kremlin Web site....

Russia to increase border troops deployed in Abkhazia, South Ossetia (click here)
www.chinaview.cn

2009-08-05 22:52:02

MOSCOW, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- Russia plans to increase the number of troops it has deployed in Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from around 1,800 to 3,000 by the end of the year, a deputy foreign minister said Wednesday.
"Presently, there are some 1,000 Russian military personnel in Abkhazia and up to 800 in South Ossetia," Grigory Karasin said, quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.
He said that by the end of the year there will be 1,500 troops in each region.
Karasin also said Russia has verified reports that say Ukraine was involved in arm shipments to Georgia prior to the brief war between Georgia and Russia last summer.
"We do hope that Ukraine, as a state near to us, will stop playing these dangerous games, creating problems in current relations, already problematical," he said....

Shutdown FOX - their coverage is toxic to the best outcome for Americans.

Kindly thank all the companies that upheld the integrity of our President. I thank them. It is nice to have companies sensitive to issues without asking. Nice.


SCJohnson (click here)

Progressive Insurance (click here)


Proctor & Gamble (click here)


Lexis Nexis (click here)


Geico (click here)

Fox News' "Glenn Beck" loses advertisers (click title to entry - thank you)
Wed Aug 12, 2009 9:00pm EDT
By Kenneth Hein
NEW YORK (Nielsen Business Media) - Some of the nation's biggest advertisers are distancing themselves from Fox News host Glenn Beck after he called President Obama a racist during a July 28 broadcast.
Geico has pulled its ads from Fox News Channel's "The Glenn Beck Program." Lawyers.com, which is owned by LexisNexis, also has vowed not to advertise during the program, according to Color of Change, an African-American online political organization that has been urging advertisers to stop supporting the show.
Additionally, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance and SC Johnson all said their ad placements during the broadcast were made in error and that they would correct the mistake.
The controversy stems from Beck's comment that President Obama is a "racist" with "a deep-seated hatred for white people."
Geico spent more than a half-billion dollars on ads last year, according to the Nielsen Co. It spent more than a quarter-billion dollars in the first half of 2009....

Whichever way the wind blows, Grassley. He is incompetent.

Chuck Grassley has exhibited over and over again, he has no conscience when making statements of what he believes is good policy. He is a political animal and nothing else. He doesn't care about Americans, he wants to win elections.

Ritual suicide would be too easy for them (click here)
Interestingly, Grassley is up for re-election next year. He voted for the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), which allocated some money to AIG. Something tells me he won’t be re-elected. If he is, the voters of Iowa should get set to genuflect and work long days in the rice paddy fields for the great lord and his vassals of swift judgment.
Here’s what I think. I believe in public service. Intense public service. If AIG executives refuse to give back the money, whether it be in the form of taxation or a simple handover to taxpayers, AIG executives give up their freedom and begin to work very hard doing the jobs that nobody else wants to do. Put your back into it, Edward Liddy. Or your spleen.
You’ll live in a boarded up storefront off the same food children in destitute Third World countries eat. If we deem it necessary, we’ll tap into your organs as a power source. Keep pedaling that bike, Mr. AIG; power for a taxpayer’s foreclosed home depends upon it. You will be allowed to live.

Grassley Repeats ‘Death Panels’ (click here)
The Iowa Independent’s Jason Hancock was trailing Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) as the senator made appearances across the state to talk about health care. Hancock reported yesterday afternoon that, at a rally in Winterset, Iowa, Grassley — the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which is currently negotiating a much-anticipated health care bill — promoted the myth that proposed health care reforms would create government “death panels” that would decide whether the old and infirm would live or die.

When the going gets tough, the President gets support.

..."A new coalition on Thursday (click title to entry - thank you) is launching $12 million in television ads to support President Barack Obama’s health-reform plan, in the opening wave of a planned tens of millions of dollars this fall.
"The new group, funded largely by the pharmaceutical industry, is called Americans for Stable Quality Care. It includes some odd bedfellows: the American Medical Association (click here), FamiliesUSA (click here - Number of Americans that have lost health care insurance since January 1, 2008 - 3,722,053), the Federation of American Hospitals (click here for the view point of investor owned hospital community),PhRMA (click here - medications are only 10% of every health care dollar) and SEIU (click here - stop the violence at American Town Hall Health Care Meetings), the service employees’ union…



"The debut ad is meant to shore up support among the conservative House Blue Dog Democrats, and to target swing senators. So it’s airing in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota and Virginia. The first buy is expected to run for two weeks, with a weekly spend of around $3 million....