Despite $15.9 Billion Loss, U.S. Postal Service Execs See Boost in Pay

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photo credit: amelungcDespite nearly $16 billion in annual losses announced by the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday, all but one of the top five executives for the nation’s mail service had an overall compensation increase this year, records show.

Unlike past years, when the Postal Service’s politically appointed, bipartisan board of governors awarded executives lucrative deferred compensation deals and incentive bonuses, this year’s compensation increases came mostly in the form of pension plan earnings.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, for instance, earned a base salary of $276,840, but even without a bonus or incentive payout, his overall compensation came to $512,093, compared with $384,229 in 2011, according to regulatory filings.

Fueling the rise was the fact that his retirement account grew by $186,536. A 37-year employee of the Postal Service, Mr. Donahoe was paid $4.76 per hour during his first job as a postal clerk.

Meanwhile, two other executives — Ellis Burgoyne, chief information officer, and Mary Anne Gibbons, general counsel — also received hefty increases in their retirement plans.

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University Bans ‘Needlessly Provocative’ Ann Coulter, Welcomes Advocate of Bestiality, Euthenasia and Infanticide

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photo credit: gage skidmoreAfter effectively barring conservative columnist Ann Coulter from speaking on campus last week, the Jesuit college Fordham University welcomed infanticide and bestiality advocate Peter Singer for a panel discussion on Friday.

According to Fordham’s media relations website, Singer, a tenured Princeton bioethics professor, spoke from 4 to 6 p.m. in a panel the university promised “will provoke Christians to think about other animals in new ways.”

Singer has long lamented the societal stigma against having sex with animals.

“Not so long ago,” Singer wrote in one essay, “any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, at best, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion. One by one, the taboos have fallen. But … not every taboo has crumbled.”

In the essay, titled “Heavy Petting,” Singer concluded that “sex across the species barrier,” while not normal, “ceases to be an offence [sic] to our status and dignity as human beings.”

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Ranchers, Farmers Brace for ‘Death Tax’ Impact (+video)

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photo credit: royal_broilRancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax — also known as the “death tax.”

And with that tax set to soar at the beginning of 2013 without some kind of intervention from Congress, farmers and ranchers like Kester are waiting anxiously.

“There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations,” said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.

Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.

For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody’s estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn’t own a mansion. He’s not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.

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Iron Dome Intercepts Missiles Aimed at Tel Aviv (+video)

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The Iron Dome intercepted two Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles aimed at Tel Aviv on Saturday. The missiles marked the third attack on the heavily populated central city in as many days, after Palestinian terrorists from Gaza fired four missiles toward the financial capital on Thursday and Friday, prompting red alert air raid sirens to sound in the city.

While police said that one of the missiles landed in an open area, a military source told The Jerusalem Post that the Iron Dome intercepted both missiles.

The Defense Ministry deployed an upgraded Iron Dome battery in the Gush Dan area in the center of Israel on Saturday morning, after rushing its production in light of escalation. The battery is the fifth Iron Dome system operational in Israel.

Islamic Jihad leader Khalid Batsh said on Saturday that the launch of rockets at Tel Aviv from Gaza show “the rules of the game have changed in the region,” Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported.

The attack followed volley after volley of rockets aimed at southern towns on Saturday, as red alert sirens wailed repeatedly, warning residents to flee for cover. Two rockets also landed outside the capital Jerusalem on Friday. One rocket landed near a Palestinian village in the West Bank, shattering windows and scaring residents. Another struck a home in Ashdod directly, injuring five Israeli civilians.

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Republicans Allowed Karl Rove to Mislead Them Again

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The crime: Mitt Romney’s inexplicable defeat. The suspects: everybody in the world, except the people who really deserve it.

The first obvious target, of course, is Mitt Romney himself, who managed to lose to a president with one of the worst economic records in memory. Then eyes turned to Romney’s campaign staff, which somehow could not turn a vibrant, brilliant, Cary Grant–in–the–making into the next president of the United States. Perhaps the fault lies with President Obama, who only pretended that nobody in America liked him. Or it was those tricky young people, who somehow managed to vote when everyone assumed they were too lazy to bother. Perhaps it was Nate Silver and his crazy belief in “theory” and “science.” Or the latest suspects: Martha Raddatz and Candy Crowley in the conservatory with the lead pipe.

Personally I love scapegoating as much as the next guy—was Jar Jar Binks really the only reason the Star Wars prequels were terrible?—but I can’t let them pin this one on Martha and Candy. Nor can I allow Republicans to pull an O.J.—stopping at nothing until they find the “real killers” of the 2012 campaign.

We know where they are. We know who they are. We’ve been here before. Years ago, as an escapee of the George W. Bush administration, I wrote a whole book about it. The only question is whether or not enough Republicans want to do anything to solve the problem.

This is not the first election cycle in which Republicans have been shell-shocked by reality. Six years earlier, Republicans across the country believed they would retain control of the House and Senate. That’s because Karl Rove and his acolytes in the Bush administration and the Republican Party told us so.

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St. Lucie County Canvassing Board Orders Retabulation of All Early Votes in Allen West Race

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The St. Lucie County Canvassing Board has ordered the retabulation of all the county’s early votes in the highly contested congressional race between Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and Democrat Patrick Murphy, according to Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a volunteer lawyer for the West campaign. The board voted 2-1 in favor of recounting the votes.

“This retabulation of all early votes as the Supervisor of Elections originally planned is a victory for democracy,” Shapiro told TheBlaze. “This restores some level of trust and public confidence in the system…it was the right thing to do.”

Starting at 9 a.m. on Saturday, election officials will retabulate a total of 33,379 ballots from all eight days of early voting in St. Lucie County, he explained.

West needs to gain just 249 votes from those ballots to trigger a statutory recount under state law, Shapiro said. West gained 535 votes in the initial recount of 16,275 early voting ballots, making it theoretically possible that the outspoken congressman could pick up the required votes to force a recount. Both candidates combined lost more than 800 votes, however, 80 percent of the decrease was owned Murphy.

Before the canvassing board voted, state Division of Elections official David Drury made a “personal” recommendation that all early votes in the county be retabulated after officials realized there were 304 early voting ballots that were never counted. There was also reportedly a missing “communications log.”

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Heroic Veterans Save Wives in Horrible Accident With Texas Train (+video)

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Police have identified the four servicemen who died in Midland, Texas when a freight train plowed into a parade float carrying wounded veterans and their spouses at a crossing, two of whom saved their wives by pushing them to safety before they died.

Army Sgt. Maj. Gary Stouffer, 37, and 47-year-old Army Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Boivin were pronounced dead at the scene, police said, after the float carrying wounded veterans and their families to an honorary banquet was struck by a Union Pacific train around 4:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon. The train struck as the parade was crossing the tracks, turning the honorary event into a scene of destruction.

Army Sgt. Joshua Michael, 34, and 43-year-old Army Sgt. Maj. William Lubbers were transported from the scene and later pronounced dead at Midland Memorial Hospital, according to the Midland Police.

Seventeen people in all were transported to the hospital and 10 were treated and released. Four people were in stable condition and one is in critical condition as of this morning.

Michael was killed in the crash but was able to save his wife, his mother-in-law told the Amarillo Globe-News. Read more from this story HERE.

Federal Housing Administration Next in Line for Bailout

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photo credit: jeffryturnerWASHINGTON — The Federal Housing Administration, which has played a crucial role in stabilizing the housing market, said it ended September with $16.3 billion in projected losses — a possible prelude to a taxpayer bailout.

The precarious financial situation could force the FHA, which has been self-funded through mortgage insurance premiums since it was created during the Great Depression, to tap the U.S. Treasury to stay afloat.

The agency said a determination on whether it needs a bailout won’t come until next year.

The FHA is required to maintain enough cash reserves to cover losses on the mortgages it insures. But in its annual actuarial report to Congress, the agency said a slower-than-anticipated housing market recovery has led its reserves to fall $16.3 billion below anticipated losses.

The FHA’s cash reserves aren’t supposed to drop below 2% of projected losses. They ended the 2012 fiscal year at -1.44%, down from the seriously low level of 0.24% at the end of 2011.

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Video: 82 Year Old Sentenced to Three Years in Prison Because His Dog Killed Neighbor’s Cat

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An elderly man has been sentenced to three years in prison for allowing his dog to kill another family’s pet cat.

Hume Hamilton, 82, was caught on surveillance camera taking his dog for a walk near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in June.

He walked up a driveway to where a cat was apparently resting, and the dog was filmed suddenly attacking the cat.

Hamilton can be seen in the footage trying to separate the two animals by stepping on the cat, but he was unsuccessful.

He left the scene with his dog, and the cat later died of the injuries it had sustained in the assault.

The cat’s owner, Wayne Spath, told WSVN the pet was ‘part of our family’, adding: ‘My daughter found that cat as a kitten, had it for 12 years.’ Read more from this story HERE.

See the surveillance video here:

Meghan McCain Wants GOP to Go Left or She’ll Leave

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Meghan McCain wants Republicans to wake up or else she just might leave the party.

The Republican daughter of Sen John McCain, who famously blogged from her father’s presidential campaign bus about fashion on the campaign trail, is saying the GOP’s positions on social issues are outdated and irrelevant.’I don’t fit into the traditional Republican box that the ‘wingnuts who have hijacked my party think all Republicans should,’ she wrote in an opinion piece.

In an opinion piece penned for the Daily Beast, McCain notes that if the Republican Party does not adapt and start showing signs of social tolerance the GOP will not survive and that if she does not see signs of moderation on social issues she ‘will consider registering as an Independent in 2016.’ The realization hit her election night as she was choking back tears over the Mitt Romney’s campaign loss to President Barack Obama.

‘It’s not like he’s a close friend,’ she wrote. ‘Looking back to last week, I think that I was mourning something else. For the last four years, writing on this website, I’ve been calling for the Republican Party to come to terms with reality and modernize. Last Tuesday, Mitt Romney lost—and he lost big. As Republicans, we lost again. I felt sad, exhausted, beaten down, and heartbroken. It was the first time that I considered that the Republican Party, which I love so much, might die.’

Read more from this story HERE.