Remember all gaps get filled….

Cheers on your weekend!

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“LAKEPORT, Calif. (AP) — Scott and Robin Spivey had a sinking feeling that something was wrong with their home when cracks began snaking across their walls in March.

The cracks soon turned into gaping fractures, and within two weeks their 600-square-foot garage broke from the house and the entire property — manicured lawn and all — dropped 10 feet below the street.

It wasn’t long before the houses on both sides collapsed as the ground gave way in the Spivey’s neighborhood in Lake County, about 100 miles north of San Francisco.

“We want to know what is going on here,” said Scott Spivey, a former city building inspector who lived in his four-bedroom, Tudor-style dream home for 11 years.

Eight homes are now abandoned and 10 more are under notice of imminent evacuation as a hilltop with sweeping vistas of Clear Lake and the Mount Konocti volcano swallows the subdivision built 30 years ago.

The situation has become so bad that mail delivery was ended to keep carriers out of danger.

“It’s a slow-motion disaster,” said Randall Fitzgerald, a writer who bought his home in the Lakeside Heights project a year ago.

Unlike sinkholes of Florida that can gobble homes in an instant, this collapse in hilly volcanic country can move many feet on one day and just a fraction of an inch the next.

Officials believe water that has bubbled to the surface is playing a role in the destruction. But nobody can explain why suddenly there is plentiful water atop the hill in a county with groundwater shortages.

“That’s the big question,” said Scott De Leon, county public works director. “We have a dormant volcano, and I’m certain a lot of things that happen here (in Lake County) are a result of that, but we don’t know about this.”

Other development on similar soil in the county is stable, county officials said….”

Full article

Full report

“Virgin Galactic’s passenger spaceplane, which is designed to take tourists to the edge of space, flew its first rocket-powered test flight, breaking the sound barrier at high altitude.

SpaceShipTwo ignited its engine Monday after being released by WhiteKnightTwo, a plane that carried it to 47,000 feet (14,000 meters) above California’s Mojave desert, British billionaire Richard Branson‘s firm said.

The rocket burned, as planned, for 16 seconds — enough to propel the spacecraft to 55,000 feet at 1.2 times the speed of sound, the statement said.

“For the first time, we were able to prove the key components of the system, fully integrated and in flight,” said Branson, who observed from the ground.

He predicted the successful test would pave the way to “full space flight by the year’s end.”

Next time, the company plans to keep the rocket going longer, to bring SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of more than 328,000 feet (100 kilometers), on the edge of space….”

Full article

“When one conspires to violate federal law, it helps to have a government agency or two as one’s co-conspirators when law enforcement comes poking around, as telecom giant AT&T and others learned recently when the Defense Department (DOD) and theDepartment of Homeland Security (DHS) successfully pressured the Justice Department(DOJ) to agree secretly not to prosecute blatantly illegal wiretaps conducted by AT&T and other Internet service providers at the request of the agencies.

Although some press reports have termed this an authorization of activity that would otherwise be illegal, this is a misnomer. The executive branch lacks the power to retroactively declare criminal conduct to be lawful, but it can choose to ignore it by waiving prosecution pursuant to “prosecutorial discretion.”

Although the secret DOJ prosecution waiver initially applied to a cyber-security pilot project—the DIB Cyber Pilot—that allowed the military to monitor defense contractors’ Internet links, the program has since been renamed Enhanced Cybersecurity Services and is being expanded by President Obama to allow the government to snoop on the private networks of all companies operating in “critical infrastructure sectors,” including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

“The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws,” warned Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which obtained more than 1,000 pages of government documents relating to the issue via a Freedom of Information Act request. “Alarm bells should be going off.” …”

Full article

Nissan recall

Honda recall

Personal Income: Prior 1.1%, Market expects 0.3%, Actual +0.2%

Spending: Prior 0.7%, Market Expects 0.1%, Actual 0.2%

PCE: -0.1%

Just got back from a little time off.

Not having a mobile phone is not enough for me to be disconnected every now and then.

Given the proliferation of the mobile; here is a topic not spoken about as with many hidden realities tied to our consumer culture.

Remember as a consumer we collectively have the power to force change. If we are not informed and make no demands upon corporations then they will always seek the cheapest means to produce products we consume; ultimately that means we are guilty of child slavery, murder, and disregard for the planet.

Cheers on your weekend!

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.5% pace in the first three months of 2013, up from 0.4% in the fourth quarter, as consumer spending rose at the fastest rate in two years and businesses restocked warehouse shelves. Yet government spending fell sharply again ands imports surged to act as drags on economic growth, according to data released Friday by the Commerce Department. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had forecast growth to rise to 3.2%, so the less-than-expected number could weigh on U.S. markets. Consumer spending – the motor of the U.S. economy – rose 3.2% to mark the sharpest gain since the end of 2010, though some of the increase was the result of higher oil prices. Inventories also soared to an estimated $50.3 billion after a scant $13.3 billion increase in the prior quarter, but that buildup is probably unsustainable. Final sales of U.S.-made goods and services, a more precise gauge of demand, rose a much smaller 1.5%. That matched the lowest increase in eight quarters. Investment in residential housing, a source of recent economic strength, jumped 12.6% to mark the third straight strong advance. Business spending on equipment and software rose 3%. In a bit of a surprise, military spending sank 11.5% after an unusually steep drop of 22.1% in the fourth quarter. And overall government spending fell 4.1% in the first three months of the year, perhaps partly reflecting federal spending cuts that began to take effect in early March. Meanwhile, imports surged 5.4% after falling 4.2% in the fourth quarter, spurred by higher oil prices. Americans had to pay more to fill up at the gas station. Exports climbed 2.9% after a 2.8% drop in the fourth quarter. Inflation as measured by the PCE price index rose at an annual rate of 0.9%, down from 1.6% in the prior two quarters. Core PCE rose slightly faster at 1.2% The GDP report will be refined through two further updates over the next few months.

$FB Facebook upgraded at Raymond James: Full Story bit.ly/ZyYjM0

— The Fly on the Wall (@theflynews) April 26, 2013

The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind him, slamming on the brakes. A man in dark clothes got out and approached the passenger window. It was nearly 11 p.m. last Thursday.

The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him, lowered the window — and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door, and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.

“Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of the grainy suspect photos less than six hours earlier.

“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”

FULL STORY

Gawker.com has cracked open the tweets of one of the suspected bombers…

“A cached profile photo that matches his picture, and tweets from other users he’s interacted with suggest that this is the twitter account of 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the fugitive suspect #2 in the Boston Marathon bombings: @J_tsar. The account is listed under the name “Jahar,” which is what classmates called him because his full name was hard to pronounce.

Surprisingly, Tsarnaev has been active on Twitter since the bombing. His last tweet was on Wednesday, two days after he is alleged to have helped carry out the Marathon bombing…”

Full article and tweets

The U.S. is largely a Christian nation that goes by the religious motto of “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.”

This country was founded for many reasons, of which do not seem to be upheld by our behavior.

Call it human nature, call it…. manipulation by a few. It is your duty as a citizen to be informed and to insist we adhere to a moral compass.

Otherwise, your patriotism and unspoken support of our behavior are complicit in allowing Devil like behavior to reign over this world.

Cheers on your weekend!

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