McCain's McBit**

Have you ever heard of aerial hunting? It's a brutal practice. Wolves are shot from low-flying aircraft or chased to exhaustion, then killed at point-blank range.

Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for Vice President, promotes this barbaric practice, exploiting a loophole in the Federal Airborne Hunting Act to allow private wolf killers to shoot down wolves using aircraft. To encourage the killing, she even proposed a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf!

We have to get the word out about this! Please watch this powerful new television ad by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, and then share it with every wildlife lover you know:

	Tell Everyone You Know About Governor Palin's Brutal Record Our hard-hitting TV ad is running in key swing states right now. Tell others about Governor Palin’s wolf killing record and help us reach even more voters today. Nearly 300,000 people have watched our ad on YouTube. Here's what some viewers are saying: "Shooting animals from an airplane is as low as it can get. I take that back, offering $150 for each paw is even worse. " -- utubewtchr "I'm an independent voter - when I heard about Palin's support of aerial wolf killing, I knew right off that 'she's definitely NOT like me'." -- 33tracker Dear Kathy, Thanks to the unprecedented support of more than 14,000 wildlife supporters, millions of voters in key swing states are learning more about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s values -- and her brutal record on aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife. Encourage your friends to watch the ad online and help us reach even more people with the awful truth about Governor Sarah Palin’s brutal record aerial wolf hunting. With your help, we’re breaking this story wide open. This hard-hitting TV ad has already been seen by nearly 300,000 people online. It’s been covered by many news outlets, including CNN, ABC, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, several Ohio newspapers and more. And thanks to the generous donations of people like you, millions of people in Ohio and Florida know the truth about Governor Palin’s brutal record. Now, thanks to the phenomenal support of wildlife supporters like you, we’ll be able to extend our ad buy in Ohio and Florida, air it in Michigan -- and beyond. If you haven't already, please consider donating now to help put this ad in front of even more potential voters. The more voters learn about Governor Sarah Palin, the less there is to like. But as you can imagine, running a TV ad during election season is expensive. There are still millions of potential voters across the U.S. who haven’t learned the truth about Governor Palin’s brutal aerial hunting program -- millions who don’t yet know about her proposal to dole out $150 for the severed forelegs of dead wolves. Help us expose the awful truth about Sarah Palin before it’s too late. Tell others about Governor Sarah Palin’s record on the brutal and unethical hunting of wolves from airplanes. With your help, we can ensure that voters know the truth about Sarah Palin. With Gratitude, Rodger Schlickeisen President Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund P.S. Right now, my team is preparing another powerful TV ad to air in key swing states. To help us reach more voters with the ad above and place our new ad, please make a secure online contribution today . Or call 1-800-425-4632 to contribute by phone.

Disaboom: Social Network for the Disability Boom

Social network Disaboom leads a growing demographic - Sep. 15, 2008

Opening new worlds: The Disability Boom

Led by a hot social network, disabled entrepreneurs are doing well by selling products that help the handicapped - and the rest of us.

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• DEL.ICIO.US
• REDDIT
• STUMBLE UPON
• MYSPACE
• MIXX IT

By Chris Taylor

September 15, 2008: 9:00 AM EDT

Dr. Glen House built a website where disabled users connect, find jobs, and date.

Photos

Opening new worlds

Many gadgets developed for a disabled audience have found favor with the mainstream - and made use of technology that couldn't find a toehold anywhere else. Here's a selection.

View photos

Bridging social applications

More Videos

• Opening new worlds
• Gallery: Gadgets gone mainstream
• Why disabled techies rock
• Helping deaf callers connect
• Retraining disabled vets
• Deaf school dynamos

(Fortune Small Business) -- Despite his wheelchair, and often because of it, Dr. Glen House has always enjoyed doing what he isn't supposed to.

Take the time he persuaded his neighbor in Colorado Springs, J.W. Roth, to join him on vacation in the ice fields of Taku, Alaska. The trip entailed flying to a remote lodge in a tiny ski plane that was ill-equipped for disabled passengers: Boarding was via a rope ladder. "They said no wheelchairs," Roth recalls. "So we signed up."

That 2006 trip was a turning point for House and Roth. The boarding process was dicey: Roth gave House a fireman's lift up the plane's ladder, which dangled over the ice. "If I go down, you're going with me," House snarled on the way up. But later the pair sat in the Taku lodge, wondering how they might bring such exhilarating experiences to other disabled people. "They're sick of doctors," House told Roth. "They want to know how to live forward with their conditions."

That chat led to this year's launch of Disaboom.com, a fast-growing social network aimed at the 50 million Americans with disabilities and their caregivers. In a time of social-network fatigue, as Facebook and MySpace have spawned hundreds of bland imitators, Denver-based Disaboom is unique. It focuses on a large, untapped audience eager to get answers and make connections, and one that advertisers had previously been unable to reach.

Like the entrepreneurs in the stories that follow, House demonstrates that disabilities are no obstacle in the brave new world of technology. If anything, the determination they engender provides a clear business advantage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of self-employed Americans with disabilities has grown from 12% to 15% since the dawn of the Web. For the rest of us, the figure has stayed static at 8%. Your next competitor may just zoom past you in a wheelchair.

When House wants to get somewhere, he goes fast. "That is how I ended up in the wheelchair," he says. During a ski vacation in Snowbird, Utah, House ignored the sign that read DANGER! ROCK! and at 20 became a quadriplegic from the pectorals down.

But House lost no time pursuing his next goal: He began studying for medical school. His Disaboom colleagues all have stories of his dangerously fast driving; one had to pull him from his car when it skidded off the road into the Colorado snow.

House is the public face of Disaboom, writing most of the medical guides to the 40 disabilities the site covers and participating in its forums. It doesn't hurt that he and Roth founded the company last year just as the Fox drama House, which features a partially disabled doctor named Greg House, started winning over critics and viewers. Glen House was not the inspiration for the show, although at least one patient insisted on his autograph anyway.

It helped that Roth, one of the founders of biotech firm AspenBio, came aboard as CEO. Roth swiftly garnered $15 million in funding and began targeting advertisers. By April, Disaboom had racked up $1 million in ad sales to corporate Godzillas such as Ford (F, Fortune 500), Avis (CAR, Fortune 500), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500), and T-Mobile, and had served up 23 million online ads.

Roth launched a sister site, Disaboomjobs.com, in an effort to address the 60% unemployment rate among disabled Americans. He even bought a disabled-dating site called lovebyrd.com.

"We don't want Disaboom to smell like a doctor's office," Roth says. "We want to deal with dating issues, sex issues, how to drive a fast car."

Disaboom officially launched in January. The main site now boasts 72,000 registered users, and the rate at which new users sign up is growing by 500% a month. In March presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain both launched profiles on the site. Roth and House maintain folders full of thank-you e-mails, many from parents of disabled kids who didn't know where to turn until they found sympathy and suggestions from the Disaboom community.

The site is not without problems. Roth decided to take Disaboom (DSBO.OB) public before its launch; as of late August, the stock was trading at an anemic 50 cents a share, $1.30 off its 2007 high. One disabled blogger at GearAbility.com complained that Disaboom jobs listed too few positions specifically for the handicapped, and that much of the content read like PR blurbs.

"There's a lot of buzz about them," says Jennifer Simpson, senior director of technology policy at the American Association of People With Disabilities, a lobbying group in Washington, D.C. "We talk about them all the time, but I don't think they're where they want to be."

House and Roth are working on that. They recently struck deals with the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School to license a reliable range of medical content. With $4 million cash in hand, Disaboom's stock slump isn't going to bite anytime soon. The 39 employees on staff include three full-time "social marketers," who write blogs and help promote the site on a range of popular websites such as Digg and Twitter.

"This is the tip of the iceberg," says Roth at his conference table in a suburban Denver office park. He already has plans to launch other social networks for underserved markets. Neither he nor House will say more than that, but it seems likely that they'll soon be doing something they weren't supposed to do, one more time.

Share your thoughts on the disabilities boom in our discussion forum.

Opening New Worlds gallery: Check out these gadgets developed for the disabled that have gone mainstream.

A buzz about honey: A disabled son's obsession spawns a thriving family business.

Vision quest: How an entrepreneur turned a potentially crippling disability to his advantage.

WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA

Stunned Lehman Employees Pack Bags Across Asia; Investors Fume

September 16, 2008: 06:57 AM EST

TOKYO (AFP)--As Lehman Brothers workers packed their bags across Asia, an employee of the once venerable Wall Street firm in Tokyo said he felt like he had been handed the death penalty.

There was a somber mood at Lehman's Japanese unit, housed in a 54-storey skyscraper in Tokyo's glitzy Roppongi Hills complex where the bird's-eye view of the capital was once a metaphor for the bank's financial pride.

Employees of the 158-year-old bank, which crumpled under mortgage-related losses, were already trying to get on with their lives even though Lehman has made no official announcement on layoffs.

"Now I know what it feels like to be handed down the death sentence," said one American employee in his 20s.

He said he had been closely following developments in the past weeks in the news media, receiving no information from his superiors.

While he was considering enrolling in a US business school next year, "it looks like I could be leaving (Japan) like, next week," said the employee, who did not want his name used out of concern for his professional future.

A trickle of casually dressed workers braved flashing cameras and drizzling rain to enter the building but it seemed many others stayed away -- possibly brushing up their resumes.

Another young Lehman employee decided to take the day off, going for a bike ride to shop and meet friends who worked for teetering Merrill Lynch and the now defunct Bear Stearns.

Smiling with them in a photo entitled "One crazy day" that she uploaded on her Web site, she added a hint of sarcasm with the caption: "reps from former banks." Lehman filed for bankruptcy and court protection from its creditors Monday after potential buyers, including Bank of America and Britain's Barclays PLC, walked away from a deal and the U.S. government refused to intervene.

Currently the bank is in talks with Barclays which is considering acquiring certain of its assets, including its key investment management unit.

Employees were not the only shell-shocked victims - thousands of investors and ordinary shareholders are seeing their holdings blow up, as Lehman shares have plunged 94% to 21 cents.

"I keep getting calls from angry customers yelling at me because they lost all their money. The market is fluctuating so much," said Tse Yu-tui, a dealer at Prudential Brokerage in Hong Kong.

"I have told them not to buy any more, but they did not listen to me, and then what can I do?" he asked.

Camera crews waited all day in a shopping mall outside of Lehman Brothers' Hong Kong office, which occupies four floors in the city's tallest building.

Local broadcaster Cable News quoted sources as saying that Lehman had told staff in Hong Kong to work half-day shifts from now on until managers figured out a proper arrangement.

Employees at Merrill Lynch were also biting their nails, left guessing over their professional fates after its rescue buyout by Bank of America.

Managers are "trying to put a positive spin on the whole thing, saying that there will not be much overlap in their business and our business," a Merrill Lynch employee told AFP in Hong Kong.

"The impression is that even if there are going to be any layoffs, it is going to be much less serious than the situation in the U.S. Right now even top management have no idea what will happen to them," she said.

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This web site began a decade ago when I found myself having trouble finding a good background texture for my first web site (long gone!) and realizing that the internet needed a good comprehensive archive of textures for use in web pages. So I made one myself, and since then it seems to have become the most popular one. I also created a web graphics archive, as well as one of fonts and sound effects.

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