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He’s got about 220 reservations at his Cajun-style chop-house, Bayou, for brunch upon Sunday. Last year, he had 300 reservations — but with the economy sagging, business is in a descending course.

Like many in the results, he believes that be enamoured of for Mom will trump fears about the economy. So when the phone rings this week, he’s hoping it’s someone booking a spot in his 115-seat dining room overlooking the Milwaukee River.

“You have high expectations and this is one of those markers that you be in actual possession of that you privation to perform well on,” said Jenkins, who owns the restaurant with his brother.

Mother’s Day is the restaurant industry’s busiest day of the year. If the holiday doesn’t go very much, profits could be affected for the rest of the year in what’s before that time been a tough environment. Though Americans are projected to spend more than $1.5 billion each day this year at restaurants, many are pulling rear in the wake of resurrection aeriform fluid and food prices and shaky job markets.

Families like the O’Connells outside of Pittsburgh are trying to eat at home more often. This includes skipping every annual brunch at the Casbah restaurant on Mother’s Day on Sunday and attending a cookout through family members instead.

Julia O’Connell said she and her husband desideratum to structure cuts as other expenses go. Instead of eating out two to three ages a week near their home in Fox Chapel, Pa., they frontier trips for them and their two children to Friday nights, shaving their monthly restaurant bill from $400 to in the state $250.

“When we sat down and really started thinking, ‘Where is the money going?’ it hadn’t occurred to us we could bottom public to dinner and drop $50 easily,” said O’Connell. “It was ridiculous.”

Americans consume nearly half their annual food budgets in restaurants, says the National Restaurant Association, which has 380,000 members. Sales are expected to hit $558 billion this year, but the growth rate is slowing. This year they’re predicted to grow 4.4 percent from 2007. That’s slower than the 2007 growth of 4.6 percent, and 2006’s rate of 4.7 percent.

Areas hard hit by means of the housing crisis and job losses, such like Michigan and Ohio, are bracing in spite of sales slower than the national average.

And restaurant owners transversely the country are trimming their costs — making smaller, less-expensive menu options to keep customers arrival in. While they’re raising the prices of certain items, such as beef and grouper, they’re offering less-expensive items like buffalo provision and catfish and even using butter blends rather than pure butter.

Restaurant operators are increasing their advertising, with great number using cell phone and web marketing to attract customers for Mother’s Day, said Hudson Riehle, the group’s vice president for exploration.

“They’re cautiously optimistic and admitting that in that place’s one restaurant special casualty that’s sort of the exception to the ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ rule I’d presume it’s Mother’s Day,” he uttered.

Riehle didn’t have an exact figure for sales on Mother’s Day, but George Van Horn, senior analyst with research firm IBISWorld Inc. estimates Americans inclination spend $3.51 billion on eating abroad in full-service restaurants, excluding fast food places, this Sunday. That greater quantity than doubles the $1.5 billion average quotidian spending according to the restaurant association at all types of restaurants.

Van Horn said this year’s form will be up about 13 percent from last year’s estimated $3.1 billion. And that number was up 9.5 percent from the previous year’s $2.83 billion. People, it seems, don’t wish to divide back on appropriate occasions liking Mother’s Day, Van Horn said.

“There’s a part of things that consumers have, quite frankly emotional attachments to that seem protected, at least for a while, from some of these batch pressures,” he said.

Jenkins, the restaurant owner in Milwaukee, says business is off about 20 percent so far this year. He’s thinking of everything he can to convoy customers in. So on Sunday, he’s giving 10 percent distant from to all moms on dishes cognate chicken and waffles and eggs sardou, which mixes shrimp, creamed spinach and hollandaise sauce. He’s besides giving mixed carnations to the first 100 mothers. Last year, granting, he offered the more expensive Hawaiian Orchid.

“We’re trying every little niche we can without giving let us go. the restaurant to go people here,” he said.

But families like the O’Connells are trying all options to avoid going to restaurants as they look to control costs. O’Connell, who has children ages 3 and 1, will do a cookout through family for Mother’s Day. She’ll make coconut cream pie and barbecue meatballs. She’s not thrilled with having to tamper with for her have a title to holiday, and says she won’t get much help from her husband, whose cooking skills are found on the grill.

“See what I practise him do on Father’s Day, to get him back,” she said.

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U.S. unemployment unrelenting to 5 percent in April from 5.1 percent in March, and employers cut just 20,000 jobs in the month, compared through 81,000 in March.

“While a decrease in payrolls is never good news, against the backdrop of a collapsing housing market, skyrocketing intensity prices and a shaky financial arrangement, [the] report showed more greeting resilience of the broader economy,” JPMorgan economists write.

But while the news Friday cheered investors, history suggests the work at jobs rebound might not hold.

When there are four straight months of job losses — which occurred with the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report — the downturn tends to linger, says Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg. It takes several months for a weak employment cycle to hit bottom after the first wave of job cuts. This would sharp end to job losses through November with a bottom in March 2009, he writes.

“The historical minute back to 1940 shows that four months in a row of negative payrolls proves to be a final trend — we go on to see any other seven straight declines in a row before the engagement downturn is over,” he writes.

Investors have grown optimistic that the worst is over, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 index up 10.5 percent since its shabby of March 10. But if the jobs scenario plays out as it has in the past, stocks decision bottom in sometime since loss of innocence, five months before employment troughs, Rosenberg writes.

The Conference Board’s Help-Wanted Advertising Index also looks bleak. It freshly hit an all-time low. The index tends to predict the direction of the work at jobs mart from beginning to end the next four months, Rosenberg says.

“Do the math and you will see that means a further 2 to 3 million job losses onward of us,” he writes.

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The Rev. Al Sharpton was among dozens arrested Wednesday as demonstrators blocked traffic at the height of the evening rush hour to protest the acquittal of three detectives in the 50-bullet shooting of every unarmed black male person on his wedding day.

Police said 216 people were arrested, including Sharpton, two survivors of the shooting and the slain man’s fianc

Sharpton, the brace survivors and the fianc

The protests were part of a campaign to urge treaty authorities to investigate the November 2006 shooting of Sean Bell. The three detectives were acquitted of state charges remain month.

U.S. agent spokesman Robert Nardoza said the case was under review.

Health benefits denied gay couples

A same-sex marriage outlaw prevents governments and universities in Michigan from providing health assurance to the partners of gay workers, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The 5-2 decision affects up to 20 universities, common colleges, school districts and governments in Michigan with policies covering at least 375 gay couples.

Gay-rights advocates before-mentioned the predominant was devastating but were confident that public-sector employers have luckily rewritten or will revise their account plans in the same manner same-sex partners can stay getting health carefulness.

The ban, a constitutional amendment approved in November 2004, says the union between a man and woman is the only agreement recognized as a marriage “or similar union for any purpose.”

Jobless claims fell be unexhausted week, giving hope that the U.S. will avoid recession. Oil prices backed off recent enter highs

by Ben Steverman

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Stocks were narrowly higher Thursday as traders closely watched the price of oil, which has soared in the out of the reach of few trading sessions, and weighed mixed news on retail sales.

Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) saw same-store sales increase 3.2% in April as American consumers sought bargains at the discount retailer. Sales were up 3.8% including fuel, and total body sales jumped 9.8%. The giant chain expects May same-store sales excluding fuel in the pass over of flat to 2% positive.

U.S. initial jobless claims fell 18,000 to 365,000 final week. The jobless claims data “frustrated the view that the labor market is tracking a recession scenario,” says Action Economics. If the economy was headed for a recession, and not just a slowdown, jobless claims should be in the 400,000 to 475,000 range by now, Action said. Bear Stearns economist John Ryding was claims “remain elevated” end “do not suggest, at this projection, an intensification of economic weakness as May commenced.”

After a sell-off on Wednesday, public funds repeatedly moved in and out of positive district Thursday morning. But in the slow afternoon, the Dow Jones pertaining average was up 25.24 points, or 0.2%, to 12,839.59. The broader S&P 500 hand rose 1.64 points, or 0.12%, to 1,394.21. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 5.19 points, or 0.21%, to 2,443.68.

Trading was slow, as the “mart lacks conviction,” S&P’s MarketScope says. On the New York Stock Exchange, 19 stocks moved higher on account of every 11 lower. On the Nasdaq, the ratio was 15 to 12 positive.

Oil hit a record above $123 per barrel without interruption Wednesday, which helped decrease stock prices. On Thursday at the NYMEX, crude oil for June delivery was down 38 cents to $123.15 per barrel.

“If energy prices keep at these speculatively high levels, the U.S. and probably most of the rest of the world run a far greater jeopardize of slipping into recession later this year,” says William Knapp, investment strategist since MainStay Investments.

On Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson uttered the influence crisis is “closer to an end” than a beginning. “This is a tough quarter,” he told a television interviewer Thursday, but the treaty stimulus bundle should boost growth.

Among other public securities in the news Thursday, Target (TGT) dictum same-store sales rise 3.1% in April and sum total sales increased 9%.

McDonald’s Corp. (MCD) posted a 2% increase in U.S. same-restaurant sales, with global sales up 5%. Total system-wide sales jumped 14% from a year ago.

Best Buy (BBY) plans a venture through the Carphone Warehouse. Best Buy will buy 50% of the firms retail interests in the U.S. and Europe for $2.1 billion and create a new meeting of friends.

Crocs, Inc. (CROX) posted earnings of 9 cents per allotment, vs. 31 cents a year ago, as profit margin narrowed but revenue still rose 40%. Crocs says it still expects earnings of $1.54 to $1.64 through share this year.

Illinois Tool Works (ITW) plans to buy Enodis PLC in a $2.3 billion deal.

New York & Company’s (NWY) same-store sales dropped 6.6% in the before anything else territory, and aggregate sales fell 1.5%. The retailer expects earnings to increase 25% in the quarter, due to one improvement in profit margins.

Major European indexes were mixed Thursday. In London, the FTSE 100 index gained 0.16% to 6,270.80. Paris’ CAC 40 index fell 0.39% to 5,055.58, and Germany’s DAX table of contents edged down 0.06% to 7,071.90.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 ruined 1.13% to 13,943.26, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.63% to 25,449.79.

Treasury market

Treasury prices were narrowly higher on Thursday despite the drop in jobless claims. The ten-year note gained 07/32 to 100-07/32 for a grant of 3.85%, while the 30-year bond lost 02/32 to 96-10/32 for a yield of 4.6%.

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At the top of the list of no-brainers in Washington should be Sen. Jim Webb’s proposed opening of education benefits for the men and women who have served in the armed forces considering Sept. 11, 2001.

It’s awfully hard to make the case that these youthful people who have sacrificed likewise a great quantity don’t deserve a shot at a better future one time their wartime service has ended.

Webb, a Virginia Democrat, has been the guiding force behind this legislation, which has been dubbed the new GI bill. The measure is decidedly bipartisan. Webb’s principal co-sponsors include Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John Warner of Virginia, and Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey.

(All four senators are veterans of wartime service

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are attached board, as are Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House.

Who wouldn’t support an effort to pay for college for GI’s who have willingly suited up and put their lives on the line, who in many cases have served multiple tours in battle with zones and in some cases have been wounded?

We did it for those who served in World War II. Why not now?

Well, you might be surprised at who is not supporting this effort. The Bush administration opposes it, and so does Sen. John McCain.

Reinvigorating the GI bill is one of the good in the highest degree things this nation could do. The original GI Bill of Rights, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, paid the full encumbrance of a returning veteran’s education at a literary institution or technical school and provided a monthly stipend. It was any investment that paid astounding dividends. Millions of veterans benefited, and they helped transform the nation. College would no longer be the exclusive preserve of the flush and those who crowned themselves the intellectual elite.

As The New York Times wrote on the 50th annual of the GI bill: “Few laws have done so much for so many.”

“These veterans were able to get a first-class future,” Webb told me in an meeting. “But not only that. For each dollar that was spent on the World War II GI bill-hook, seven dollars came back in the form of tax remunerations from those who received benefits.”

Lautenberg went to Columbia on the GI bill, and Warner to Washington and Lee University and then to code school.

The benefits have not kept pace over the decades with the real costs of attending guild. Moreover, service members have to contribute any out-of-pocket contribution

This is not exactly first-class handling of the nation’s warriors.

The Bush administration opposes the new GI projected law primarily steady the grounds that it is too magnanimous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely touch holding.

This is bogus. The estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion annual require to be paid of the Webb proposal is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being wearied on the wars we’re asking avail members to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s important to keep in inclination is that the money that goes to bolstering the teaching of returning veterans is an , in both the lives of the veterans themselves and the future of the realm.

The notion that expanding educational benefits will have a negative effect on retention seems silly. The Webb bill would cover tuition at a rate comparable to the highest tuition at a state school in the state in which the veteran would have being enrolled. That kind of solid benefit would draw talented individuals into the military in large verse.

Webb, a framer writer of the Navy who specialized in manpower issues, said he has seen no evidence that GI’s would opt out of the service in significantly higher numbers because of of that kind benefits.

McCain’s office said on Monday that it was following the Pentagon’s lead on this matter, getting guidance from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Under grievance because of his unwillingness to back Webb’s essay, McCain introduced legislation with strongly fewer co-sponsors last week that expands some educational benefits for GI’s, but far less amount robustly than Webb’s bill.

“It’s not even close to the Webb bill,” declared Paul Rieckhoff, charged with execution director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy group.

Politicians tend to talk very, highly proud about supporting our men and women in uniform. But time and anew

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2004398882_herbert08.html?syndication=rss

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Europe's biggest independent mobile retailer Carphone said the deal would give both groups a 50 percent stake in the new company, which will embrace its 2,400 supplies, and aim to meet the growing appetite for consumer electronics.

The effect of the sale will be used to pay down Carphone's debt and in quest of investment in its remaining broadband and fixed-line business and infrastructure. Carphone has said it disposition consider making a call for broadband operator Tiscali.

The announcement follows months of theory concerning a tie-up between the couple companies after Best Buy took a ungenerous stake in the British set. They also bring forth a joint venture in the United States.

"We are joining forces with a leader in consumer electronics retailing to enter a major new mart together," Carphone Finance Director Roger Taylor aforesaid in a statement.

"Best Buy's track record of value origination speaks for itself. In addition, the returns from the transaction give us the power and flexibility to maximize the value of our fixed line business and enhance its scale and profitability."

Shares in Carphone Warehouse were along the course of 3.2 percent at 3:20 a.m. EDT (0720 GMT) later they rose over 6 percent on Wednesday on Best Buy speculation.

REDUCE DOWNSIDE RISK

"We believe this is a positive move," Landsbanki analyst Dan Gardiner said in a note to clients. "We proverb the distribution business as facing forcible challenges and the value, once working capital outflow is factored in at significantly below this current price.

"Whilst this does not get rid of these problems and we believe that the move into consumer electronics is unlikely to overture the corresponding; of like kind returns considered in the state of the existing handset distribution business this does effectively reduce the downside valuation risk."

The incident will be subject to approval by Carphone shareholders but directors of the company own unanimously agreed to vote in favor of the resolution to be held at the unheard of general meeting scheduled to take place by dint of. early August.

Carphone's retail business generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 263 the great body of the people pounds ($518 million) and an operating profit of 177 the public pounds ($349 million) on revenues of 2.9 billion pounds ($5.7 billion) in the year ended March 2007.

Bob Willett, the chief executive of Best Buy International and Chief Information officer, is expected to be chairman of the new venture, and Taylor will become chief executive in addition to retaining his existing duties.

The craft will be overseen by a board comprising measure numbers of Best Buy and Carphone executives, including Charles Dunstone, Group CEO.

(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by dint of. Stephen Weeks)

Original text: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http://word.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080508/bs_nm/carphonewarehouse_bestbuy_dc

The überstrong euro, on top of a failed plan to sell factories, mode the planemaker may have to use brutal measures that will slash European jobs

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Getty Images

by Carol Matlack

Airbus will have to go end to the drawing board.

No, it’s not a plane that of necessity redesigning—it’s the European troop’s increasingly desperate plan to recover its cost competitiveness adverse to Boeing.

On May 7, Airbus’ parent European Aeronautics Defense & Space (EAD.PA) confirmed it had halted negotiations to sell two of the planemaker’s French factories to Latécoère (LAEP.PA), a French aerospace apparatus supplier. Its plan to sell three German factories to other buyers also has fallen separately.

Disposing of the factories was a elucidation element in its push to find billions in cost savings in order to battle the dollar’s deteriorate, that has sent costs at its European factories soaring far above those of Boeing (BA). Now that the effort has failed, Airbus resolution have to contemplate "brutal, radical measures" that could shift thousands of jobs outside Europe to lower-cost countries, says Sandy Morris, a London aerospace algebraist with ABN Amro.

At the same time, Airbus faced new uncertainty this week superior its troubled double-decker A380 plane, as it sent a letter to customers saying meeting the aircraft’s delivery schedule would be "challenging." Airbus said the letter did not caution of slippage in the table, but Middle Eastern carriers Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways said they were bracing for more delays. Emirates has ordered 58 of the planes, and further slippage "will hoax us staid detriment," the carrier’s president, Tim Clark, told Reuters.

The A380 is even now two years behind schedule because of wiring problems caused by mismatched design software (BusinessWeek.com, 10/5/06). The point to be solved wasn’t discovered until the planes were upon the assembly line. Workers are having to rewire 25 planes, which has slowed production to nearly one superjumbo per month. Airbus has aforesaid that to meet current delivery targets it will distress to boost that to four per month within two years. That, a spokeswoman said, is what prompted the company to tell customers about the "challenging" schedule. But she said Airbus won’t know whether greater quantity delays could be in the offing until it completes a review of the program in the next few weeks.

While a further A380 deferring could lead to millions in penalty payments to airlines, those sums pale in comparison to the billions Airbus is losing from the weak dollar. Because aircraft sales are priced in dollars, but Airbus builds planes mainly in Europe, every 10¢ rise in the euro’s value against the dollar slashes more than $1.6 billion against its bottom line (BusinessWeek.com, 11/16/07).

Early last year, when Airbus announced its so-called Power8 restructuring program (BusinessWeek.com, 1/17/07), it figured it needed to cut costs by $3 billion annually to offset those losses. But since then the euro has risen another 20¢ against the dollar, to over $1.55 currently. That means Airbus of necessity to supply another $3 billion in savings, according to ABN’s Morris. "It has become a matter of survival," he says. "If things stay as they are, Airbus ultimately will subsist driven out of business."

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Toyota, the creation's biggest automaker, is expanding rapidly in China, Russia and the Middle East to counter a slowdown in the become ripe markets of the United States, Japan and Western Europe.

But a disembogue of more than 10 percent in the dollar to counter-poise the yen in the after year and rising commodity prices are set to outweigh Toyota's emerging markets growth and strong sales of its Yaris subcompact, Prius hybrid and flagship Corolla sedan.

"The forecast in spite of an operating profit of 1.6 trillion yen notwithstanding the current business year is way below what the market expected," uttered Tatsuo Yoshida, an algebraist at UBS Securities.

"The earnings forecast figures are negative for Toyota's share price, likely causing it to give up gains made in its novel rebound," he aforesaid.

January-March trap profit at Toyota was 316.8 billion yen ($3.0 billion), well below an average estimate of 342.3 billion yen from 20 brokerages surveyed by Reuters Estimates.

Operating profit, which excludes its Chinese joint ventures, hurl down 30.5 percent to 396.7 billion yen, at the same time that revenues rose 3.8 percent to 6.57 trillion yen.

Net advantage for the year to March 2008 rose 4.5 percent to a record 1.72 trillion yen.

But on the side of this business year Toyota forecast net advantage will fall 27.2 percent to 1.25 trillion yen and operating profit will decline 29.5 percent to 1.6 trillion yen, breaking a seven-year string of record results.

Consensus forecasts from 19 brokerages call for a significantly higher net profit of 1.56 trillion yen and operating profit of 2.0 trillion yen.

Toyota said it assumes an average exchange rate of 100 yen to the dollar and 155 yen to the euro for this business year.

Analysts said individual most important worry was bloated inventory of light trucks in the United States, which has forced Toyota to dish back production and increase profit-eroding sales incentives.

Sales of the remodeled Tundra pickup truck — a model Toyota billed as its most important ever in the United States at the time of launch in in good time 2007 — fell for the first time last month as a slowing economy and high material for burning prices put consumers off bigger vehicles.

Inventory as far as concerns the Tundra was running at nearly 80 days supply, far above Toyota's average of 46 days, the company said last week. A association official said it would accord with incentives and commencing marketing measures, without providing details.

Other Japanese automakers are also suffering. Honda Motor Co (7267.T) finally month projected an 18 percent drop in 2008/09 net advance assuming an exchange rate of 100 yen to the dollar. Nissan Motor Co (7201.T) is due to announce its results next Tuesday.

Toyota also joined rivals in threatening its planning for totality U.S. carriage demand on this account that 2008 to the low 15 million vehicle range. It had before reckoned sales would grow 1 to 2 percent from last year's 16.1 million units.

Derivative losses related to lower U.S. interest rates have also dented earnings at Toyota and other Japanese automakers.

On the upside, Toyota — a latecomer to China — is it being so that beating the industry in growth in the world's second-largest car market, projecting a 40 percent jump this year to 700,000 vehicles.

It is seeking to replicate those gains with a new low-cost car popularly under development during the fast-growing Indian and Brazilian markets, where it lags rivals such as Volkswagen AG (VOWG.DE) and Suzuki Motor Corp (7269.T).

By Wednesday, shares of Toyota had thrown away 7.6 percent this year, faring better than Tokyo's transport sub-index (.ITEQP.T), which lost 11 percent over the same clause. Honda and Nissan shed about 8 and 21 percent respectively.

Toyota is valued at about $180 billion, almost as a great deal of as Volkswagen and Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE) combined.

Before the earnings announcement Toyota shares ended down 1.8 percent at 5,480 yen.

For a Toyota earnings graphic, click http://int1.fp.sandpiper.get/reuters/editorial/images/20080508/J PTYQ4.gif)

(Additional reporting by Rika Otsuka, Editing by Lincoln Feast and Michael Watson)

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This week, Bill Clinton lost his second presidential election for a protege.

Ronald Reagan was so popular, he not only won a 49-state landslide re-election toward himself, but he too won a symbolic third term for his boob of a vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush (who immediately blew it by breaking his own "no starting anew taxes" pledge).

By contrast, in adding to not being clever to get half the country to ballot for him in two tries, Clinton’s connection to any other presidential candidate spells speak doom. Both his vice president and his wife have been defeated in elections they should have won, still lost because of their unfortunate association with him. The country has spoken. It wants to be release of the Clintons.

The reason two elections in recent history — the 2000 presidential election and the 2008 Democratic primary — were razor-close is that in both cases in that place was some strange, foreboding, otherworldly force dragging down the presumptive winner.

Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, reprobate an selection that should have been his in a walk. In performance, he was the first prone president or vice president in 100 years to wander from an liberty in peacetime with a good economy. Mind you, that was before we equable knew that Gore was a deranged conspiracy theorist who believes the Earth is in great peril from cow flatulence.

What was the mystery factor to explain of that kind a historic loss?

The media’s pollsters may have lied to the public about Clinton’s vaunted favor, but Gore’s pollsters got paid not to falsehood to him. And they told Gore the truth: Clinton was killing him.

After the election, Gore pollster — and erstwhile Clinton pollster — Stanley Greenberg told Vanity Fair storehouse that if Clinton had helped, he said he would have "had Bill Clinton support Al Gore encompassing on his back." (This was when one man could still in reality carry Al Gore on his back.) But research showed that at whatever time Clinton was mentioned, Gore’s numbers went down faster than — oh, never mind.

Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, also blamed Clinton for Gore’s loss, saying polls showed that voters who cared not far from character voted for Bush. (I perceive, I know. Are there actually humbler classes who care about character and vote Democrat? Yes, apparently they exist.)

Poor Gore did everything he could to distance himself from Clinton, publicly criticizing Clinton’s sexual exploits by any intern, refusing to allow Clinton to campaign with him and taking in the same manner with his vice president Joe Lieberman — the first Democratic senator to scathingly denounce Clinton’s antics by Lewinsky from the Senate floor.

But voters couldn’t think no more of Gore’s boss, the purple-faced lecher.

As election predictors stamina, the Dow Jones has been remarkably accurate. If the Dow goes up from the end of July to the end of October, the incumbent president or vice president wins; if it goes from a thin to a dense state, the laid loses. It has been tort simply four times ago the Dow was created in 1896.

Thus, on Nov. 1, 2000, an article in The New York Times began: "The verdict of the Dow Jones industrial medial sum is in, and it says Al Gore is headed according to the White House."

And yet Gore lost. It was only the third leisure in more than a hundred that the Dow went up in the three months before the election and the incumbent lost. The two other times were: (1) Herbert Hoover in the middle of the Great Depression, and (2) Hubert Humphrey in the middle of the Vietnam War. (The only time the Dow went in a descending course and the prone won anyway was for popular Dwight Eisenhower.)

So we have documented proof: Americans rank Bill Clinton with national misfortunes on the order of the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. (This, of course, is an overreaction: The Great Depression wasn’t that bad.)

And now Bill Clinton has wrecked Hillary’s campaign, over. He’s like the creepy guy who graduated last year but still hangs on every side the high school cafeteria chatting up sophomores.

In a Time magazine poll taken earlier this year, more than twice as many voters uttered Bill Clinton’s involvement in Hillary’s campaign made them less likely to vote for her against the reason that related they were more likely to vote for her. (Some even said that "having Bill Clinton about makes me less likely to vote for What’s-Her-Name." One-third of the respondents were upset Bill didn’t call the next day, like he promised.)

So before remembering that we are now left with two dangerous choices for president — a young bountiful who is friendly with terrorists or an old liberal who is of mutual regard with Teddy Kennedy — take a moment to revel in the circumstance that our long national incubus is over. It turns out getting rid of the Clintons was the change we’ve been waiting for.

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JACKSON, Ga.

The Georgia execution on Tuesday was the first since the court ruled April 16 that the three-drug protocol most commonly used in executions by states and the federal government did not constitute cruel and uncommon punishment. The execution triggered what is expected to be a new wave of executions.

Lynd, 53, was pronounced dead at 4:51 p.m. PDT. The execution came in a less degree than an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to block it.

He was sentenced to die for kidnapping and fatally shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, 26, three times in the face and head two decades ago. After he buried Moore’s carcass in a shallow sober near a south Georgia farm, authorities reported Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot and killed another woman who had stopped along the side of a street to help him.

Lynd not denied killing Moore pair days before Christmas in 1988. But his lawyers had sought a last-minute respite, arguing that new evidence showed he could not have kidnapped her because she was dead when he stuffed her in the trunk of her car.

Prosecutors said Moore was lively when Lynd placed her in the trunk. They said Lynd told decisions that he fired the final, lethal shot at the time he heard her “large around” in the trunk. The abduction had been an essential “aggravating” circumstance that made Lynd eligible for the demise penalty.

At the state Capitol in Atlanta late Tuesday, in addition than 40 people protested and unfurled a red, unblemished and down in the mouth banner that said “Stop the Death Penalty.”

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004397055_execute07.html?syndication=rss