Bob Turner, Weiner-Slayer, Takes Aim at Kirsten Gillibrand

Source: The Daily Beast

Will lightning strike twice? Bob Turner, the Scott Brown of the Rockaways, aims to take his act statewide.

Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal gave Bob Turner 15 seconds of fame and 16 months in Congress starting last September. Now, the new Republican congressman from Queens who won a stunning upset in last year in the special election to replace Anthony Weiner wants to extend his time in the spotlight for another six years by running for the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately for Turner, it’s not likely to happen.

Turner, a 70-year-old retired television producer who’d made a small fortune working with a bipartisan array of loudmouths from Jerry Springer to Rush Limbaugh, was briefly a national figure with his win in what had seemed a safely Democratic seat, the Scott Brown of the Rockaways. But the upset also meant the district was likely to be drawn off the map by New York’s Democratic Assembly.

Despite that, Turner took his time deciding to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand—the surprise pick by then-governor David Paterson to fill the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton left to become secretary of State—joining the fray just days before the state Republican convention this weekend. That move has alienated some of the state’s conservative leaders, who’ve already thrown their support to other candidates in a field of Republican longshots the right-leaning New York Post has dismissed as “non-entities.”





Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/16/bob-turner-weiner-slayer-takes-aim-at-kirsten-gillibrand.html

Clown Car On the Right by Eli's Femur Bone

Gas drilling industry paying Penn State to train those who regulate the gas drilling industry

What happens when the fox builds the hen house?

The drilling industry helped get some of the most influential lawmakers elected with lavish donations to their campaigns. It paid millions to lobbyists to influence legislation, and it has hired many of the experienced regulators away from public service

Now the industry will pay to train the people who set policy and enforce it.

ExxonMobil and GE will be investing $1 million each to establish new training programs at three universities, including Penn State, “to ensure that regulators and policymakers have access to the latest technological and operational expertise to assist in their oversight of shale development,” according to a Penn State press release issued Thursday.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/03/gas_drilling_industry_paying_p.html



One of Chesapeake Energy's Marcellus Shale wells sits high on a bluff over the Susquehanna River in Windham Township, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania.

Ohio: Gas-drilling injection well led to quakes

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A dozen earthquakes in northeastern Ohio were almost certainly induced by injection of gas-drilling wastewater into the earth, state regulators said Friday as they announced a series of tough new rules for drillers.

Among the new regulations: Well operators must submit more comprehensive geological data when requesting a drill site, and the chemical makeup of all drilling wastewater must be tracked electronically.

The state Department of Natural Resources announced the tough new brine injection regulations because of the report's findings on the well in Youngstown, which it said were based on "a number of coincidental circumstances."

For one, investigators said, the well began operations just three months ahead of the first quake.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/20120309_ap_ohiogasdrillinginjectionwellledtoquakes.html?c=r#ixzz1oh0tWgCP

My favorites:

The Last Word: Surprising encounters with Andrew Breitbart (MSNBC video)

Well, that was baffling. I was just asked to serve on a jury.

But when I called up the post, it had been self-deleted by the poster. There was no prompt to vote LEAVE or HIDE, but when I tried to do anything, it kept telling me that I was still on a jury. I said I'd participate, haven't turned down one yet, but there was no way to do it since the post was no longer there. I finally gave up and clicked to opt out, since I wasn't sure what else to do. Has anyone else had this happen? There must be at least five others out there...

How do posts make it to the Homepage here?

I began wondering how threads were chosen because I saw a thread on the Homepage that I thought I recommended this morning, but it was a different thread, same subject, different forum. The one I recommended had 70+ recs, but the one on the Homepage, on the same subject, only had two, now has five... Seemed odd to me.

73 recs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10167300

5 recs, on the Homepage
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101832514

State media: Suicide bomber kills at least 20 in Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- A suicide bomber disguised as a policeman targeted Shiite pilgrims Saturday outside the southern Iraqi city of Basra, killing at least 20 people and wounding 70, according to authorities and state-run TV.

The bomber struck a police checkpoint near a Shiite mosque where many of the pilgrims were headed to mark a revered holy day, the end of a 40-day mourning period known as Arbaeen, Interior Ministry officials said.

There were conflicting casualty reports, with state-run Al Iraqiya reporting there were at least 20 people killed and 70 wounded, while Interior Ministry officials told CNN there were at least 10 dead and 30 wounded. Conflicting reports are common in Iraq in the aftermath of an attack.

Scores of pilgrims -- who make the journey on foot -- have been killed and wounded in recent days in attacks blamed on Sunni extremists, who have routinely targeted the pilgrims.


http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/14/world/meast/iraq-violence/?hpt=hp_t3