From 5/8/1994 ( premiere US TV miniseries Stephen King's "The Stand"::miniseries premiere episode "The Plague" ) To 10/22/2015 is 7837 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 4/18/1987 ( Ronald Reagan - Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times in Santa Barbara, California ) is 7837 days
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=34129
The American Presidency Project
Ronald Reagan
XL President of the United States: 1981 - 1989
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times in Santa Barbara, California
April 18, 1987
The President. I want you to know that Nancy and I are very proud and happy to be here. Incidentally, we're neighbors, because just a few miles over the hills there a little ways, why, we have a ranch that's very dear to us. But hearing what Pepper had to say about love, yes, there is so much love here, and we're very proud and happy to be a part of it. And maybe you'd like to know that things like this, people like Pepper and these others here who have made this a reality and this camp out of love, this has been pretty unique and pretty peculiar to the United States. Other countries—this doesn't happen. The government does things in the other countries, or they don't get done.
But I thought you'd be happy to know that this year we have been doing a little talking to some of our friendly neighbors in the rest of the world. And as a result of that, there has been a meeting held in Paris, France [International Conference on Private Sector Initiatives], of representatives from those countries—all those countries, our neighbors and trading partners and those other countries—for them to find out from us how we get things like this done by the people themselves doing it, instead of waiting for a government program. And so, I think we're going to see things like this happening to help people all over the world.
You know, though—I can't resist this—I know I only have a few minutes, because all of us have schedules and things to do.
Mrs. Edmiston. As much as you want.
The President. No, but I just thought, instead of me going on here and talking, just—I can only do this for maybe two or three—but sometimes you must have said to yourself, "If I had a chance, I'd like to ask him if...." Well, why don't you ask me "if," and we'd have a dialog instead of a monolog.
Mrs. Edmiston. Oh, boy!
The President. What?
Mrs. Edmiston. Who's got a question here for the President? Look, they're tongue-tied. [Laughter] You kids have not stopped talking.
The President. What? Who? There?
Mrs. Edmiston. Michael.
The President. Michael?
Secretary of State Shultz' Visit to Moscow
Q. How's Mr. Shultz doing on the ordeal of—[ laughter].—
The President. On the ordeal of what?
Q. The ordeal of the nuclear missiles.
The President. Well, let me tell you, he was just back and came to the ranch Thursday, and we had a nice visit here. He's back. It was a very strenuous trip. Over there they seem to like to hold meetings. He'd be in meetings like 8 hours. But I think there is great reason for hope. For the first time—I don't think anyone's very much—this hasn't been said enough but it's the first time there has ever been a Russian leader who has actually suggested eliminating, doing away with, some of the weapons. There've been meetings before, but it was always to decide, well, how fast a rate should we agree to build more weapons. And this time they are actually suggesting, as we have been, let's do away with some of those weapons.
And he's come home very optimistic, and we're all looking forward to carrying this through to where we can make some start in eliminating these terrible ballistic missiles. And my ultimate goal is, once we start that, ultimately to get rid of nuclear missiles all over the world forever.
Mrs. Edmiston. There's a little boy over here.
The President. Yes?
The President's Plans for the Future
Q. Mr. President, I wanted to ask you: What are you going to do after you finish being the President? [Laughter]
Mrs. Edmiston. Good question.
The President. Well, first, I'm going to come back to the ranch and do some riding. But I think there are some things to be done. You know, someone once said life begins when you begin to serve. Well, I think by virtue of holding this job maybe there are still some useful things that I can do. For one thing, I have thought about the possibility of writing a book so that you could get the true story of what has been going on. [Laughter]
Mrs. Edmiston. That would be great.
The President. But I think there will be some things of that kind—and still continuing to help in worthy and good causes.
Mrs. Edmiston. Will you maybe be a counselor? [Laughter]
Just Say No Program
Q. I would just like to say to Mrs. Reagan: Thank you for your Just Say No program. I think it's—
The President. Nancy, can I tell them on you? Nancy said, "Just say no" in answer to a question from a little girl in school who asked, "What do you do when someone offers drugs?" And she said, "Just say no." Today there are over 12,000 Just Say No clubs among young people across the United States.
Mrs. Edmiston. There's a little boy in a wheelchair that had yelled—over there.
The President. Oh, yes?
Q. I sent you a letter, and I just wanted to thank you for sending me one back.
The President. Well, I was pleased to, and I appreciate your writing. Thank you.
I think I'm getting the signal that I've been here too long. [Laughter] If there were just one more, and then I would quit.
Yes?
The President's Health
Q. How do you stay so healthy? [Laughter]
The President. Well, Nancy takes good care of me. She tucks me in at night- [laughter] —and tells me to put something warm on if I start to go outdoors without it and so forth. [Laughter] But, no, to tell you the truth—and this is for all of you, and I know how much this means—I was always in athletics. I went to summer camps; I liked that very much. And we have a little exercise room there in the White House that we set up. And every day when I come up from the office, why, I go in to the Nautilus machine and start to work on some of the weights and so forth there, and it does very well.
The President's Nickname
Q. Where did you get your nickname of Dutch?
The President. Dutch? Well, with an Irish father and a mother that was English and Scotch, if I hadn't heard the real story myself, I wouldn't know how I came to be called Dutch Reagan. But my father would come home, and I guess I was rather a chubby baby, and he would refer to me as the Dutchman: "And how is the Dutchman?" And having an older brother, the rest of the kids in the neighborhood it stuck, and I grew up with the name of Dutch Reagan.
Q. It's a great name.
Mrs. Edmiston. Thank you so much.
The President. Well, all right. Thank you all.
Note: The President spoke at 1:20 p.m. at the camp.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151023/us--congress-benghazi-192783d875.html
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Under GOP grilling, Clinton seeks to close book on Benghazi
Oct 22, 9:36 PM (ET) [ Thursday 22 October 2015 ]
By BRADLEY KLAPPER and MATTHEW DALY
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton strove to close the book on the worst episode of her tenure as secretary of state Thursday, battling Republican questions in a marathon hearing that grew contentious but revealed little new about the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. She firmly defended her record while seeking to avoid any mishap that might damage her presidential campaign.
Pressed about events before and after the deaths of four Americans, Clinton had confrontational exchanges with several GOP lawmakers but also fielded supportive queries from Democrats.
In the end, there were relatively few questions for the Democratic presidential front-runner about the specific events of Sept. 11, 2012, which Clinton said she continues to lose sleep over. The hearing ended at 9 p.m., some 11 hours after it began, with some of the fiercest arguments of the day as Clinton and the House Benghazi Committee's Republican chairman fought over the private email account she maintained as President Barack Obama's chief diplomat.
"I came here because I said I would," an exhausted Clinton told Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, her chief interrogator. "I tried to answer your questions. I cannot do any more than that."
Gowdy declared after the end of the session: "We keep going on."
He portrayed the investigation as a nonpartisan, fact-finding exercise although fellow Republicans recently described it as designed to hurt Clinton's presidential bid. Democrats have pointed out that the probe has now cost U.S. taxpayers more than $4.5 million and, after 17 months, lasted longer than the 1970s Watergate investigation.
When Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, said the hearing wasn't a prosecution, Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, bluntly disagreed. He told Clinton: "The purpose of this committee is to prosecute you."
The appearance came at a moment of political strength for Clinton. A day earlier, Vice President Joe Biden announced he would not compete with her in the presidential race. She also is riding the momentum of a solid debate performance last week.
For Clinton, the political theater of the hearing offered both opportunity and potential pitfalls. It gave her a high-profile platform to show her self-control and command of foreign policy. But it also left her vulnerable to claims that she helped politicize the Benghazi tragedy.
In one tense moment, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio accused her of deliberately misleading the public by linking the Benghazi violence at first to an Internet video insulting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.
Clinton, stone-faced for much of the hearing, smiled in bemusement as Jordan cut her off from answering. Offered the chance to comment, she said "some" people had wanted to use the video to justify the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, and that she rejected that justification.
The argument went to the origins of the Benghazi saga and how Obama and top aides represented the attack in the final weeks of his re-election campaign. And it reflected the raw emotion the deadly violence still provokes, something Clinton will face over the course of her White House bid even if the Republican-led investigation loses steam.
"There were probably a number of different motivations" for the attack, Clinton said, recalling a time before a clear picture had emerged. Speaking to Jordan, she said: "I'm sorry that it doesn't fit your narrative. I can only tell you what the facts were."
As the hearing neared its conclusion, Republican questions became increasingly aggressive. Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama, however, drew laughter from Clinton by asking if she was alone "the whole night" of the attacks after returning home.
Challenged that she didn't care enough about the victims, Clinton choked up while recounting a conversation with a wounded Benghazi guard. "Please do everything you can so that I can go back in the field," Clinton said he asked her. "I told him I would. He was determined to go back, to protect our diplomats, to protect you when you travel," she said, directing the last part to lawmakers.
Clinton made no gaffes. And she never raised her voice in the manner she did at a Senate hearing on Benghazi in January 2013. Then, she shouted: "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Republicans campaigned off that oft-repeated sound bite, and she was careful to avoid leaving a similarly indelible image Thursday.
Gowdy said important questions remain unanswered: Why was the U.S. in Libya, why were security requests denied, why couldn't the military respond quickly on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 and why did the administration change explanations of the attacks in the weeks afterward?
Clinton focused on the bigger picture, starting with a plea for the U.S. to maintain a global leadership role despite threats to its diplomats. She said perfect security can never be achieved, drawing on attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military installations overseas during both Democratic and Republican administrations.
"In Beirut we lost far more Americans, not once but twice within a year," she said of the 1983 attacks in Lebanon that killed more than 250 Americans and dozens of others while Ronald Reagan was president. "People rose above politics. A Democratic Congress worked with a Republican administration to say, 'What do we need to learn?'"
At times, Clinton's effort to restrain herself from a fight was apparent, but she gradually joined the fray. She nodded when Democrats fought as her proxies, such as when Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland described the probe as a partisan campaign replete with implausible conspiracy theories.
The Republican criticism has included contentions by some lawmakers that Clinton personally denied security requests and ordered the U.S. military to "stand down" during the attacks. None of these were substantiated in the independent Accountability Review Board investigation ordered by Clinton after the attacks or seven subsequent congressional investigations.
Thursday's hearing yielded no such evidence, either.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151022/us--house-republicans-82a8b6c69f.html
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Paul Ryan is in, will seek job of House Speaker
Oct 22, 7:14 PM (ET) [ Thursday 22 October 2015 ]
By ERICA WERNER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Paul Ryan formally declared his candidacy for speaker of the U.S. House Thursday evening, pledging in a letter to GOP colleagues, "We have an opportunity to turn the page."
"Instead of rising to the occasion, Washington is falling short_including the House of Representatives. We are not solving the country's problems; we are only adding to them," he wrote. It is time, he said, "to start with a clean slate, and to rebuild what has been lost."
Ryan will face elections next week in a closed-door House GOP meeting on Wednesday and then on the House floor Thursday. His success is assured.
Awaiting him will be a mess of trouble: a Nov. 3 deadline to raise the federal borrowing limit or face unprecedented default, and a Dec. 11 deadline to act on must-pass spending legislation or court a government shutdown.
Despite initial reluctance, Ryan told colleagues he was excited for the opportunity at hand.
"I know you're willing to work hard and get it done, and I think this moment is ripe for real reform," he wrote. "I believe we are ready to move forward as a one, united team. And I am ready and eager to be our speaker."
Ryan, 45, the Republicans' 2012 vice presidential nominee, was an unwilling candidate for speaker, dragged into the contest under pressure from GOP leaders who saw him as their only hope of bringing order to a House GOP careening out of control. Speaker John Boehner announced his surprise resignation last month under pressure from conservatives, and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy abruptly dropped his bid to replace him.
Ryan, the only House Republican with national stature and broad appeal, finally agreed to seek the post, with conditions. He wanted to emerge as House Republicans' unity candidate, endorsed by the three major factions of House Republicans, to guarantee he could lead with a mandate — not risk becoming the latest victim of the intraparty unrest roiling Capitol Hill and the presidential campaign.
If such support was not forthcoming, Ryan said, he would return happily to his chairmanship of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, his dream job. The speaker's job is second in line to the presidency, but the rigors of the job would be unlikely to help Ryan if he harbors future ambitions to run for president.
But Ryan succeeded over the past 48 hours in wringing pledges of support from every major faction of the divided House GOP, including the hardline Freedom Caucus, whose support was far from assured given its rebellious members were responsible for forcing Boehner to the exits and cowing McCarthy, his most likely successor.
Ryan's announcement offers the fratricidal House GOP a chance to chart a new course after years of chaos, and may allow Republicans to refocus away from fighting each other and onto the race for the White House. It was immediately welcomed fellow Republicans.
Ryan "is a man of action and a conservative that can unite our caucus," said Rep. Ed Royce of California, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "I also admire Paul's passion for advancing pro-growth policies to create economic opportunity for all Americans, especially at a time when the Republican Party needs to expand its appeal to a broader audience."
In addition to seeking united support from the caucus as a condition for his candidacy, Ryan made clear he wanted to cut back on the fundraising that traditionally comes with the job so he could have enough flexibility to spend time with his wife and kids in Wisconsin. Younger than most past speakers and rare in having young kids — Boehner is a grandfather — Ryan will bring generational change to the speaker's chair.
Yet Ryan may be on a short leash with the Freedom Caucus. He had sought to change a House rule allowing an individual lawmaker to force a vote on ousting the speaker at any time, the arcane procedure conservatives were threatening against Boehner before he resigned. The Freedom Caucus did not go along and the matter remains unresolved.
And coming votes on the debt limit and budget might be cases where Republican leaders would have to rely largely on Democratic votes to achieve their goals, a practice the Freedom Caucus strongly opposes and wants to see Ryan avoid.
"We can support him and we want him to be successful, but we want to make sure also that he understands that this is not about crowning a king," Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho, a Freedom Caucus member, said ahead of Ryan's announcement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ryan
Paul Ryan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Davis Ryan (born January 29, 1970) is an American politician and member of the Republican Party who has served as the United States Representative for Wisconsin's 1st congressional district since 1999 and as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman since January 2015. Ryan previously served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee from 2011 to 2015. He was the Republican Party nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2012 election.
Early life and education
Ryan was born in Janesville, Wisconsin, the youngest of four children of Elizabeth A. "Betty" (née Hutter) and Paul Murray Ryan, a lawyer. A fifth-generation Wisconsinite, his father was of Irish ancestry and his mother is of German and English ancestry. One of Ryan's paternal ancestors settled in Wisconsin prior to the Civil War. His great-grandfather, Patrick William Ryan (1858–1917), founded an earthmoving company in 1884, which later became P. W. Ryan and Sons and is now known as Ryan Incorporated Central. Ryan's grandfather, Stanley M. Ryan, was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Ryan attended St. Mary's Catholic School in Janesville, where he played on the seventh-grade basketball team. He attended Joseph A. Craig High School in Janesville, where he was elected president of his junior class, and thus became prom king. As class president Ryan was a representative of the student body on the school board. Following his second year, Ryan took a job working the grill at McDonald's.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151022/us-iraq-hostage-rescue-f786dbc274.html
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Pentagon: American killed in raid to free Iraqis held by IS
Oct 22, 7:57 PM (ET) [ Thursday 22 October 2015 ]
By ROBERT BURNS and BRAM JANSSEN
IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Acting on word of an "imminent mass execution" by Islamic State militants, dozens of U.S. special operations troops and Iraqi forces raided a northern Iraqi compound Thursday, freeing approximately 70 Iraqi prisoners in an operation that saw the first American killed in combat in the country since the U.S. campaign against IS began in 2014, officials said.
The raiders killed and captured a number of militants and recovered what the Pentagon called a trove of valuable intelligence about the terrorist organization.
The U.S. service member who died was not publicly identified pending notification of relatives. Officials said this was the first American combat death in Iraq since the U.S. began its counter-IS military campaign in August 2014.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the target of the raid was a prison near the town of Hawija and that the raid was undertaken at the request of the Kurdish Regional Government, the semi-autonomous body that governs the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. He said U.S. special operations forces supported what he called an Iraqi peshmerga rescue operation.
The peshmerga are the Kurdish region's organized militia. The U.S. has worked closely with them in training and advising roles, but this was the first known instance of U.S. ground forces operating alongside Iraqi forces in combat since launching Operation Inherent Resolve last year.
"This operation was deliberately planned and launched after receiving information that the hostages faced imminent mass execution," Cook said, adding later that it appeared the hostages faced death "perhaps within hours" and that freed hostages told authorities some had been killed at the prison recently, prior to the rescue.
Cook said Defense Secretary Ash Carter approved the U.S. participation in the mission. Cook called it "consistent with our counter-ISIL effort to train, advise and assist Iraqi forces."
U.S. combat troops have rarely, if ever, participated directly in combat against IS fighters on the ground since the U.S. mission began in 2014. The U.S. has mostly limited its role to training and advising Iraqi and Kurdish forces, airdropping humanitarian relief supplies and providing daily airstrikes in IS-held areas of Iraq and Syria.
Cook said it was a "unique" circumstance for the American military in Iraq, although he would not say that it was the only time U.S. forces have engaged in a form of ground combat in Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. He said it was in keeping with the parameters of the U.S. military's role in Iraq.
"They are allowed to defend themselves, and also defend partner forces, and to protect against the loss of innocent life," Cook said. "And that's what played out in this particular operation."
In a separate statement, the Kurdish government said the operation lasted about two hours and was led by its counterterrorism forces, with support from coalition troops. It made no mention of intelligence indicating the captives were in imminent danger of being killed, as asserted by the Pentagon.
The Kurdish statement said more than 20 IS fighters were killed in the operation about four miles north of Hawija. It said 69 hostages were freed, none of whom were Kurds, and it thanked the Americans for their bravery.
The Islamic State group released a communique late Thursday dismissing what it called "a failed operation by the crusader coalition" since peshmerga fighters were not among the rescued hostages. The statement could not immediately be verified, but it was distributed on Twitter accounts with links to the group.
The circumstances in which the U.S. military member was killed were unclear, but one U.S. official said the American had been shot in a firefight at the scene. Cook said the service member was wounded during the mission and died after receiving medical care. Cook said four peshmerga soldiers were wounded.
Another U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide other initial details, said the U.S. role in the rescue mission was mainly limited to four areas: transporting Iraqi soldiers to the scene in five U.S. special operations helicopters; providing airstrikes before and after the mission; advising Kurdish fighters and Iraqi security forces; and providing the Iraqis with intelligence for the operation.
The U.S. defense official said the number of IS members killed was not to be made public immediately but that it was more than 10.
Cook said that of the approximately 70 prisoners freed, more than 20 were members of Iraqi security forces. He did not say who the others were.
Cook said five IS members were detained and "a number" were killed.
"In addition, the U.S. recovered important intelligence" about IS, Cook said without elaborating.
Hawija, located about 15 miles west of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, is home to vast wheat fields. Officials say the militant group is selling the crop to generate revenues. Iraqi forces recently moved to take the nearby city of Beiji, which is home to the country's largest oil refinery.
Iraqi forces said Tuesday that they had driven Islamic State militants out of Beiji and were in full control of the town. But coalition officials said Thursday that the mission has not been completed.
"Beiji city is contested," Maj. Michael Filanowski, operations officer for the U.S.-led coalition told journalists in Baghdad on Thursday, saying it would take time to completely clear the city of booby traps and eliminate remaining resistance.
U.S.-led coalition forces also carried out a large-scale attack on Syria's Omar oil field as part of its mission to target the Islamic State group's ability to generate money, Filanowski said. Airstrikes struck IS-controlled oil refineries, command and control centers and transportation nodes in the Omar oil field near the town of Deir el-Zour. Coalition spokesman Col. Steven Warren said the attack hit 26 targets, making it one of the largest set of strikes since launching the air campaign last year.
The refinery generates between $1.7 and $5.1 million per month for the Islamic State group.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151023/us--tennessee_state_university-shooting-b1b4f9c555.html
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Authorities: 3 shot at Tennessee State in Nashville
Oct 23, 1:52 AM (ET) [ Friday 23 October 2015 ]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities say three people have been shot at Tennessee State University in Nashville.
Tanya Stone, operations supervisor for the Metro Nashville emergency communication center, said early Friday that authorities transported three people with gunshot wounds to a Nashville hospital after a shooting on campus.
Stone did not know if they were students and did not have any information on their conditions.
She says police are "all over the scene" and there's no indication of an active shooter.
A university spokesman did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. University police dispatchers said they could not release any information.
The incident comes just over a week after three people were wounded by gunfire at an off-campus party across the street from the college.
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151022/us--mine_waste_spill-investigation-207e342eac.html
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Probe finds EPA error caused mine spill it hoped to avoid
Oct 22, 5:25 PM (ET) [ Thursday 22 October 2015 ]
By MATTHEW BROWN
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Government investigators squarely blamed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for a 3 million-gallon wastewater spill from a Colorado gold mine, saying an EPA cleanup crew rushed its work and failed to consider the complex engineering involved, triggering the very blowout it hoped to avoid.
The spill that fouled rivers in three states would have been avoided had the EPA team checked on water levels inside the Gold King Mine before digging into a collapsed and leaking mine entrance, Interior Department investigators concluded.
The technical report on the causes of the Aug. 5 spill has implications across the United States, where similar disasters could lurk among an estimated hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines that have yet to be cleaned up. The total cost of containing this mining industry mess could top $50 billion, according to government estimates.
The root causes of the Colorado accident began decades ago, when mining companies altered the flow of water through a series of interconnected tunnels in the extensively mined Upper Animas River watershed, the report says.
EPA documents show its officials knew of the potential for a major blowout from the Gold King Mine near Silverton as early as June 2014. After the spill, EPA officials described the blowout as "likely inevitable" because millions of gallons of pressurized water had been bottling up inside the mine.
The Interior report directly refutes that assertion. It says the cleanup team could have used a drill rig to bore into the mine tunnel from above, safely gauging the danger of a blowout and planning the excavation accordingly. Instead, the EPA crew, with the agreement of Colorado mining officials, assumed the mine was only partially inundated.
"This error resulted in development of a plan to open the mine in a manner that appeared to guard against blowout, but instead led directly to the failure," according to engineers from Interior's Bureau of Reclamation, who spent two months evaluating the accident.
The blowout tainted rivers in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and on the Navajo Nation with dangerous heavy metals including arsenic and lead, temporarily shutting down drinking water supplies and cropland irrigation.
The report stops short of assigning fault to any individuals, despite prior claims from EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy that it would determine fault and any negligence.
A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official whose review of the conclusions was included in the report expressed "serious reservations" over the EPA's failure to explain exactly how its communications broke down and why its officials were so insistent on starting work without more information about the complexities involved.
Richard Olsen, a senior geotechnical engineer with the Corps, also questioned why a change in the EPA coordinator for Gold King led to an "urgency to start digging" even though another EPA official had expressed some uncertainty.
The second EPA official in July asked for an outside review of the agency's plans by one of the Bureau of Reclamation engineers involved in Thursday's report. A meeting between the EPA, state officials and the engineer was scheduled for Aug. 14 — nine days after the blowout.
EPA officials pointed out that the mine plug already was leaking and could have eventually blown out anyway, and the Interior report acknowledged that was possible.
EPA spokeswoman Nancy Grantham said the report "will help inform EPA's ongoing efforts to work safely and effectively at mine sites as we carry out our mission to protect human health and the environment."
A separate investigation is pending from the EPA Inspector General's Office.
Members of Congress seized on the report to slam the government's handling of the spill. But whereas Republicans such as U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado focused their ire on the EPA, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, also of Colorado and a Democrat, repeated his call for industry reforms to speed mine cleanups.
Guidelines for cleaning up abandoned mines focus on details such as water sampling and treatment. Yet they have "little appreciation for the engineering complexity," and require but don't receive significant expertise, the Interior Department's 132-page report concluded.
Plugging abandoned or inactive mines has been common industry practice for more than a century. The report lists 31 mines across the U.S. where so-called bulkheads were installed since the 1950s to stem the flow of water into or out of a mine.
With coal mines, monitoring and cleanups are funded in part by a fee companies pay. No such arrangements exist for inoperative hard-rock mines, and that's a national problem, the report noted.
Given industry opposition to efforts to hold mine owners accountable, the cleanup has been left to a scattering of federal and state agencies, without common standards or even lists of the most problematic mines.
In the wake of the Gold King spill, EPA temporarily halted some work at 10 polluted mining complexes in Montana, California, Colorado and Missouri because of similar conditions.
Abandoned hard-rock underground mines are not subject to the same federal and state safety requirements other mining operations must follow, and "experience indicates that they should be," the report concluded.
"A collapsed flooded mine is in effect a dam, and failure must be prevented by routine monitoring, maintenance, and in some cases remediation. However, there appears to be a general absence of knowledge of the risks associated with these facilities. A comprehensive identification of sites, evaluation of the potential to fail, and estimation of the likely downstream consequences should failure occur, are good first steps in such an endeavor."
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20151023/us--iraq_hostage_rescue-a723f2b683.html
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Carter: Soldier heroically entered Kurdish-IS firefight
Oct 23, 6:47 PM (ET) [ Thursday 22 October 2015 ]
By ROBERT BURNS and VIVIAN SALAMA
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. soldier fatally wounded in a hostage rescue mission in Iraq heroically inserted himself into a firefight to defend Kurdish soldiers, even though the plan called for the Kurds to do the fighting, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Friday.
"This is someone who saw the team that he was advising and assisting coming under attack, and he rushed to help them and made it possible for them to be effective, and in doing that lost his own life," Carter told a Pentagon news conference.
Carter applauded Army Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, 39, of Roland, Oklahoma, who died of his wounds Thursday.
http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/625690/dod-identifies-army-casualty
Department of Defense
United States of America
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DoD Identifies Army Casualty
Press Operations
Release No: NR-404-15
October 23, 2015
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.
Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, 39, of Roland, Oklahoma, died Oct. 22
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: - posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 11:56 AM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Wednesday 07 October 2015 - http://hvom.blogspot.com/2015/10/visitation.html
From 11/23/2010 To 10/22/2015 ( --- ) is 1794 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my birth date in Antlers Oklahoma USA and my birthdate as the known official United States Marshal Kerry Wayne Burgess and active duty United States Marine Corps officer ) To 10/1/1970 ( Richard Nixon - Remarks at the Serbian Council Building in Belgrade ) is 1794 days
http://www.simpsonsarchive.com/episodes/1F02.txt
Homer Goes to College [ The Simpsons ]
Original airdate in N.A.: 14-Oct-93
% Fortunately, the pig's OK. Homer, the Dean, and the nerds watch as
% the pig is airlifted to safety, tied into a harness under a
% helicopter.
Dean: I'm sorry, boys, I've -- I've never expelled anyone before, but...that pig had some powerful friends.
Nixon: [bitterly] Oh, you'll pay. Don't think you won't pay!
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 07 October 2015 excerpt ends]
http://www.tv.com/shows/stephen-kings-the-stand/the-plague-1178981/trivia/
tv.com
Stephen King's The Stand Season 1 Episode 1
The Plague
Aired Sunday 12:00 AM May 08, 1994 on ABC
Quotes
General Starkey: Look at that. It killed them in a hurry down there. Telemetry reports suggest that even the ones that managed to get their respirators and gas masks on died within 12 minutes after exposure. The rest were gone in less than five. Do you believe that?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1349235/quotes
IMDb
The Stand (TV Mini-Series)
The Plague (1994)
Quotes
Maj. Jalbert: Do I have a choice?
Gen. Starkey: No. Apparently none of us do. This 'Project Blue', it's nothing but a souped up version of the flu. Herbert Denninger of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, the Pentagon's bright boy of the week, says that once we find Campion, we'll only know if it's going to jump to the outside. He says the virus will probably mutate as it passes from person to person, but that's not gonna help the people who catch it.
Maj. Jalbert: Sir, I have information that...
Gen. Starkey: [interrupting] It'll just take 'em longer to die, that's all. Most people are gonna think thay have the plain old non-lethal flu... right up to the very end, and that's the biggest break we've had so far. Now it's loose out there all because a gate malfunctioned and some idiot, glorified TV repairman grabbed his family and ran for the hills. What I'd like to do more than anything else is get that coward and...
Maj. Jalbert: Sir, we found him. We located Campion. He crash-landed late last night at a gas station on the outskirts of a one-stoplight town in east Texas.
Gen. Starkey: He made it halfway across the country in only 12 hours? How the hell did he do that?
Maj. Jalbert: I don't know. But right now, we have a shot at containing this.
Gen. Starkey: Is he alive or dead?
Maj. Jalbert: He's dead.
Gen. Starkey: Oh my God. Denninger says that this stuff has a communicability level of 99.4%! You know what that means? Any chance we had at containing by the book went out the window when Campion stopped to buy gas or his first take-out hamburger!
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1994 television miniseries "The Stand" DVD video:
00:55:09 Disc 1
US Army lieutenant general Starkey: Is that Hungarian goulash?
US Army major Len Creighton: It might be, sir.
US Army lieutenant general Starkey: Yeats was right. Things fall apart.
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 11:21 PM Pacific Time Spokane Valley Washington USA Saturday 24 October 2015
