May 18, 2012

New Albany,IN?Floyd Memorial Cancer Center of Indiana will offer a free skin cancer screening performed by local dermatologists, on Thursday, May 24, from 3-5 p.m.

The session will take place at the Floyd Memorial Cancer Center located at 2210 Green Valley Road in New Albany. Registration is required for this event. To register call 1-800-4-SOURCE or visit their website at www.floydmemorial.com/events.

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FILE – In this May 11, 2012, file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop at Charlotte Pipe and Foundry Company in Charlotte, N.C. The early border skirmishes of Campaign 2012 are reviving questions about one candidate’s former pastor and shining a spotlight on the other’s high school hijinks. Can a fresh round of questions about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate be far behind? (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

President Barack Obama speaks at a fundraiser hosted by singer Ricky Martin and the LGBT Leadership Council at the Rubin Museum of Art, Monday, May 14, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The early border skirmishes of Campaign 2012 are reviving questions about one candidate’s former pastor and shining a spotlight on the other’s high school hijinks. Can a fresh round of questions about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate be far behind?

In a campaign year when voters have declared the economy their top concern, Obama and Mitt Romney are on notice that there’s no statute of limitations on the issues or conduct that might be used against them. And there’s sure to be somebody with money or other means to insert even low-threshold matters into the political dialogue.

“It’s open season,” says Eric Dezenhall, an expert on crisis management. “This is going to be very rough.”

Thursday’s disclosure that a Republican-leaning super PAC was considering a $10 million ad campaign highlighting Obama’s past links to inflammatory preacher Jeremiah Wright was just the latest evidence that if there ever were limits on what was fair game in a campaign, they’re largely history.

That’s thanks to a flood of new money into politics, the ease of spreading political attacks via the Internet and changing attitudes about what’s an appropriate topic for discussion. Long gone are the days when candidates’ extramarital escapades were off-limits, photographers avoided taking pictures of Franklin D. Roosevelt in a wheelchair and a few newspapers and TV stations acted as gatekeepers.

The New York Times quoted backers of this year’s Wright ad proposal as aiming to “do exactly what John McCain would not let us do” in the 2008 campaign.

Romney repudiated the Wright plan, as did the super PAC financier weighing it. Nonetheless, Obama’s campaign accused Romney of refusing to “stand up to the most extreme voices in the Republican Party” and the president’s supporters were happy to associate Romney with what campaign strategist David Axelrod called the “purveyors of slime.”

McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, spoke out forcefully during the campaign four years ago against efforts to use Wright’s provocative speeches against Obama, and the issue largely subsided. But since then, a series of court cases has cleared the way for an onslaught of campaign ads from outside groups seeking to influence elections.

Such so-called super PACs can be a megaphone for matters that would have gotten less attention in the past, and still allow candidates to deny they’re involved.

But outside messengers who do the dirty work in campaigns are nothing new in presidential politics. Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988 was the target of an infamous outside ad about a furloughed rapist named Willie Horton. Democrat John Kerry in 2004 saw his record as a Vietnam War hero mischaracterized and used against him by the outside group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Political historian Evan Cornog, author of “The Power and the Story,” said the staying power of a particular issue or charge usually depends on whether it jibes with the public’s understanding of a candidate.

“We are addicted to narratives, and if something fits with the story, it’s going to get some traction,” says Cornog. “A good political operative will have a fairly good sense of what will work and what will not work.”

Both sides are experiencing this in real time:

?Questions about Romney’s bad behavior toward classmates during his high school years, revealed in a recent Washington Post article, are being used to reinforce the profile that Romney’s critics have tried to create of the GOP candidate as a corporate bully. The Democratic National Committee circulated the Post article and highlighted just one sentence about Romney’s behavior: “It was vicious.”

?Questions about Obama’s ties to his former preacher’s incendiary rhetoric about America and about whether the president was truly born in Hawaii and is a Christian fit with broader efforts to paint Obama as radically different from most Americans. Romney earlier this year told an interviewer, “I’m not sure which is worse, him listening to Reverend Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation.” That was a reference to remarks in which Obama actually did not promote a less Christian nation but observed growing religious diversity in the U.S.

When something nicely fits with the profile that one side or the other is trying to build, it may endure long after a question has been duly asked and answered.

Questions about the validity of Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate, for example, have been widely discredited, they but keep popping up. Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Rick Perry both toyed with it during the presidential primaries. A poll last May, after Obama had released his detailed Hawaii birth certificate, found that a third of Americans still thought he might have been born elsewhere or said they didn’t know.

Cornog points to plenty of positive aspects to the free-wheeling exchange of ideas and information allowed by a broad variety of news sources and the Internet but also has a warning: “If you enter an age in which you have elective belief systems independent of fact, you have a problem for your political world.”

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AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius in Washington contributed this report

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Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/nbenac

Associated Press

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But state-level data point to potentially more home repossessions ahead in Florida and many of the 25 other states where courts are required to sign off on foreclosures.

All told, the number of U.S. homes taken back by lenders in April declined 7 percent from March, the third consecutive monthly decline, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. Home repossessions fell 26 percent versus April last year.

The number of homes that lenders placed on the foreclosure path last month also declined, falling 4 percent from March and 2 percent from April 2011, the firm said.

While the figures suggest foreclosure trends are improving nationally, state data tell a different story.

“You absolutely have a tale of two different types of foreclosure trends happening across the country,” said Daren Blomquist, a vice president at RealtyTrac.

The divide comes down roughly between the 26 states where courts play a role in the foreclosure process and places like California and the other 23 states where the process generally moves quicker because judges are not required to sign off on foreclosures.

Last year, foreclosure activity, as measured by the number of homes receiving foreclosure-related notices, slowed sharply as lenders grappled with allegations that they had been processing foreclosures without verifying documents.

A $25 billion settlement reached in February between the nation’s biggest mortgage lenders and state officials has since cleared the way for banks to take action on unpaid mortgages.

In California, Arizona, Nevada and many other so-called non-judicial foreclosure states, foreclosure activity has been declining because they didn’t build a huge backlog of pending foreclosure cases last year.

In contrast, the slower foreclosure process in states like Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania helped build a logjam of pending foreclosure cases that now has lenders playing catch-up.

As a result, foreclosure activity in all the judicial foreclosure states combined jumped 15 percent versus April last year. Taken together, non-judicial states saw foreclosure activity fall 29 percent, RealtyTrac said.

While 27 states recorded increases in the number of homes entering the foreclosure process last month, it appears the properties represent largely homes where borrowers missed payments for two or three years, and lenders are now getting around to taking action against them.

“The good news there, is we don’t see a lot of evidence that there are a lot of new people who are just not making their payments who are entering foreclosure,” Blomquist said.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported on Wednesday that the percentage of mortgages that were one payment past due as of March 31 declined to the lowest level since mid-2007. While the share of home loans that were at least three months past due at the end of the first quarter fell to the lowest level since the end of 2008.

Home loans taken out at the peak of the housing boom continue to comprise the majority of problem loans. In the first quarter, some 60 percent of all mortgages past due 90 days or more, or in foreclosure, were originated between 2005 and 2007, the MBA said.

Meanwhile, banks are increasingly agreeing to short sales rather than foreclosing on homes. In a short sale, the bank agrees to accept less than what the seller owes on their mortgage.

In the first three months of this year, short sales grew while foreclosures declined. Short sales are now on pace to outnumber sales of bank-owned homes in California, Arizona and 10 other states, RealtyTrac said.

That could help slow the pace of home repossessions, which are on pace to be just over 700,000 this year. Last year, about 1 million homes ended up foreclosed-upon.

All told, foreclosure-related notices were reported on 188,780 U.S. properties last month, the lowest monthly total since July 2007, RealtyTrac said. That’s a decline of 5 percent from March and down 14 percent from April last year.

Lenders took back 51,415 homes and began the foreclosure process on 97,665 homes last month.

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We’ve spent our fair share of time behind the dash of Tesla’s gorgeous Model S, though there hasn’t been an opportunity to push the all-electric vehicle to its limits on the fuel battery front. The sedan still isn’t quite ready for a full-on range test, but the manufacturer has provided a teaser in the form of some updated stats, with a line graph demonstrating consistent improvements over the Roadster. Assuming constant highway travel at speeds of 50-70 miles-per-hour, the Model S is expected to continue rolling for 250-350 miles on a single charge, with the car possibly exceeding 400 miles at slower speeds (think 35 mph and below, but still on the highway). There’s an 85 kWh battery on board (compared to 55 kWh on the Roadster), and despite taking a massive hit for size and weight, the Model S only consumes about 10 percent more power than its more-svelte sibling. Those figures apply to the mph listed above, and speed demons can expect to see a massive dive in range. Sounds like we can expect some fiery performance on the road — just, hopefully not in the garage — when the sedan begins making its way to customers next month, ahead of the original July ship proposal. Hop on past the break and hit up our source link for some nifty graphs, along with Tesla’s findings in full.

Continue reading Tesla publishes Model S efficiency and range stats, expects 350 highway miles per charge

Tesla publishes Model S efficiency and range stats, expects 350 highway miles per charge originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 May 2012 18:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Squishy,

When you were little and you got sick I could hold you all day long.

I could sing to you, and rock you, and pat your bottom until you fell to sleep.

I could take you in the shower with me, and hold you in the steam, or keep you warm as the cool water took your fevers down.

I could protect you from as much of the sickness as I could.

But now that you are older, you aren?t as willing to accept my help.? You, my love, are the most strong-willed, and stubborn little sick toddler I know.

You play until you physically can?t and then you try to play some more.

You fight sleep, you push the cool compress of your forehead.

You don?t want to stay in our bed, and you don?t want to be out of it.

You asked for your daddy, and wanted your mommy.

You asked for your mommy, and wanted your daddy.

You asked to go home, but you were sitting in our bed in our home.

Your little feelings get hurt when plans get canceled, I couldn?t even look at you as you cried to me about wanting to go to Kidville Camp today.

You?re are not even three years old yet, and watching you learn the reality of reaching your limits is heartbreaking for a mother to see.

I can?t seem to comfort you the way I used to, and it hurts to watch you struggle through an illness.

I know as the years pass you will want me less and less and need me more and more.? At least that is how I feel about needing my mother when I am sick.

I see glimpses of you on a daily basis and know that that is what my 16 year old son will look at one day.

But today, today you are still my almost three year old baby.

And as the fever hits a high point, you reach out to me, and ask me to snuggle you.

You tell me you are home when I lift you in my arms and rock you in a chair that your legs dangle off the sides instead of fitting so neatly inside.

And I cry knowing that this moment right here is another moment that you just grew up in front of my eyes, and cherish the moments of knowing that today mommy can still make you feel better at least for another day.

Xoxxo,
Mama

*Dear Squishy is my version of (a less than) Wordless Wednesday where each week I write a letter to my son.

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GHTime Code(s): nc?

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1. 10 Must Have Items for a Sick Toddler | Toddler Talk
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3. My Sick Squishy Doesn?t Know How to Be Sick?
4. Managing to Find Fun During Sick Days.