Donna Summer, the woman affectionately known as the Queen of Disco, died in Florida this morning after a battle with cancer. She was 63.
According to a TMZ report, sources close to Summer have stated the singer was trying to keep a tight lip on the extent of her illness.
"We spoke to someone who was with Summer a couple of weeks ago ... who says she didn't seem too bad," shares TMZ. "In fact, we're told she was focused on trying to finish up an album she had been working on."
The five-time Grammy award winner rose to superstardom in the '70s with hits such as "Hot Stuff," Last Dance" and Bad Girls." Her success continued well into the '80s with "This Time I Know It's for Real," and "She Works Hard for the Money."
Summer, along with producer Giorgio Moroder, were accredited with defining the '70s dance music era, influencing a slew of acts including David Bowie and Duran Duran.

Ron Paul chastises at GOP conference: Conservatives ‘like the empire’

By Andrew McLemore
Saturday, April 10th, 2010 -- 6:10 pm
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ron paul yelling cropped proto custom 2 Ron Paul chastises at GOP conference: Conservatives like the empireTexas Rep. Ron Paul proved once again Saturday that his politics continue to divide the Republican Party.

He was met with both disapproval and applause during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference for describing conservatives as hypocritical when they call for a return to Constitutional values while supporting foreign wars.

"The conservatives and the liberals, they both like to spend," Paul said, according to Think Progress. "Conservatives spend money on different things. They like embassies, and they like occupation. They like the empire. They like to be in 135 countries and 700 bases.

"Don’t you think it’s rather conservative to say, ‘Oh it’s good to follow the Constitution. Oh, except for war. Let the President go to war anytime they want.’ We can do better with peace than with war."

While most of the other speakers at the event used plenty of rhetoric for "easy applause," as Washington Post reporter David Weigel put it, Paul stuck to the outrage over American foreign policy that has defined his platform.
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Whenever the boos grew loud enough, Paul returned to his "humble" foreign policy stance.

"It's been 60 years since we went to war in Korea," said Paul. "Why do we have to have troops there?"

Enough of Paul's supporters showed up for the conference that many of his fellow speakers were met with boos on issues of government spending. In a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Paul walked away with the most support for a 2012 presidential bid: 31 percent.

Eying another bid for president after a run in 2008, Paul is telling Republican activists that "the American people have awoken" because Washington won't address the nation's fiscal crisis.

"The reason why the American people have awoken ... is because the country is broke and the people in Washington won't admit it."

Paul added, however, that President Obama is not the "socialist" he has been labeled by Tea Party activists.

Most political commentators believe Paul is vying with Mitt Romney for the top slot of the straw poll of this weekend's conference.

In a question-and-answer period after his speech, a blogger asked Paul why his supporters seemed so disinterested in the Republican Party.

"The question you should be asking," said Paul, "is, why isn't the Republican Party interested in them? We can get huge crowds with this message."

A Chicago man is accused of stealing a Bobcat tractor early Friday then driving it through the gates of a nearby Family Dollar store to take deodorant, police said.
Michael Younger, 50, of the 8100 block of South Vernon, was charged with two counts of felony burglary for stealing the tractor from a West Side construction site and stealing items from the store.
He allegedly took the Bobcat from the 5300 block of West Chicago Avenue, the site of the former 15th District police station and the soon-to-be home of a community center.
Younger is charged with using the machine to break through the Family Dollar's window and crash into the store. Police said the man was found in the area with stolen gift cards and two cans of deodorant.
According to local reports, the man told police he found the gift cards on the ground. Police compared his image to that on store surveillance video and arrested him.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Nobody told Hurricane librarian Rebecca Elliot that the $22,600 Internet router in the branch library's storage closet was powerful enough to serve an entire college campus.

Nobody told Elliot how much the router cost or who paid for it. Workers just showed up and installed the device. They left behind no instructions, no user manual.

The high-end router serves four public computer terminals at the small library in Putnam County.

"I don't know much about those kinds of things," Elliot said last week, before politely leaving to help an elderly patron select books. "I just work here."

The state of West Virginia is using $24 million in federal economic stimulus money to put high-powered Internet computer routers in small libraries, elementary schools and health clinics, even though the pricey equipment is designed to serve major research universities, medical centers and large corporations, a Gazette-Mail investigation has found.

The state purchased 1,064 routers two years ago, after receiving a $126 million federal stimulus grant to expand high-speed Internet across West Virginia.

The Cisco 3945 series routers, which cost $22,600 each, are built to serve "tens of thousands" of users or device connections, according to a Cisco sales agent. The routers are designed to serve a minimum of 500 users.

Yet state broadband project officials directed the installation of the stimulus-funded Cisco routers in West Virginia schools with fewer than a dozen computers and libraries that have only a single terminal for patrons.

"The routers have a lot of power," said Karen Goff, executive secretary of the West Virginia Library Commission. "Because the routers are so big, our tech guys had to build shelves for them. The libraries had no other place to put them."

Morgantown-based WVNET, the state government Internet services agency, uses six Cisco routers with similar capacity to serve all state agencies and public universities.

West Virginia Homeland Security chief Jimmy Gianato, who's leading the state broadband project, defended the $24 million router purchase last week, saying the devices "could meet many different needs and be used for multiple applications."

"Our main concerns were to not have something that would become obsolete in a couple of years," Gianato said. "Looking at how technology evolves, we wanted something that was scalable, expandable and viable, five to 10 years out. We wanted to make sure every place had the same opportunity across the state."

It's been nearly two weeks since we've taken delivery of our six-month road test 2012 Volkswagen Passat TDI, and we are already impressed with its outstanding fuel economy. Seems we aren't the only ones, as a new world record has been set for the farthest distance traveled on a single tank of fuel.
The Taylors aren't your average drivers, as they have made their careers out of driving efficiently. Recently, they drove a stock 2012 VW Passat SE TDI with a six-speed manual transmission from Houston, Texas to Sterling, Virgina. Over the three days the couple traveled 1,626.1 miles on a single tank of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel. Averaging 84.1mpg, the couple tried to drive in typical driving conditions.
They included 120 pounds of luggage and drove during the day time so they would possibly run into rush hour traffic in the morning and afternoon. They also never drove more than 14 hours in one day.
"We're excited to have borken the record for the longest distance driven on one tank of fuel," said John Taylor. "The Passat TDI was the perfect car for the trip. It offers plenty of interior and cargo space, yet is frugal enough to help us achieve this record."
The Taylors beat the previous record of 1,526.6 miles by 99.5 miles. The previous record was set in Europe in a VW Passat 1.6 BlueMotion diesel.
This record is nothing short of impressive, and couldn't have come at a better time as we prepare to hit the road in our six-month road test 2012 Volkswagen Passat TDI in the coming weeks. While we aren't sure if we'll get the same mileage as the Taylors did, we are hoping to beat the 43 mpg EPA rating on the window sticker.

We have a 6.6 duramax just came out of body shop. Trans housing is cracked and leaking then the engine started to over rev by itself and would not shut off with the key blowing the engine.

Biden to speak at AFL-CIO meeting in Miami
The Associated Press
MIAMI -- Vice President Joe Biden will address the nation's largest union groups as Congress is considering the heavily union-supported Employee Free Choice Act.

The AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting and newly appointed Labor Secretary Hilda Solis are both in Miami this week drumming up support for the bill that would give workers the option of unionizing by getting a majority of the workers to sign cards or a petition instead of holding secret ballot elections.

Biden will speak to them Thursday morning before heading to the Miami Intermodal Center, a transportation project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Vice President will also visit Miami Police on Friday.

Yo if anyone ask you were at the house last night you and josh went to the store when it went down