LOTTOMIKE's Blog

never had a stranger year than this one.rang in last year with my fellow members here and had a fun time.the year started out great.by the time summer hit i had won over 5 grand online and the sky was the limit.the rest of the year should be fantastic right? not so fast whippersnapper.the roof,sky and floor all caved in.found out my job was ending,internet gambling law was passed,starting facing health issues.never ever count your chickens before they hatch....ever.i'm not a bitter man but just cautious after what i've went through.can you believe at the end of may i had a used corvette picked out and by the end of september i was getting title loans on my van?  my how the world can change and fast it does.change on a dime quicker than you can blink.you see i had this online thing figured out brothers and sisters.the internet gambling law was my initiation of a thing called cruel twist of fate.i hope everyone is right and the online thing keeps on but i'm cautiously optimistic.i don't play as much because i don't want to get to dependant on my winnings and then have the carpet yanked from under me.so i have already been living more frugal and no i don't like it.we will all know here in the next few months just how much sting this bill has when the regulations are finally put in place for the banks.i'm really hoping for the best because after all i do have a huge stake in this.i'm not doing too bad right now compared to the hell i was going through the last few months.sometimes you just have to accept your station in life and roll with it.i got my kids,my health and the future and even if things get hard sometimes i just need to accept the lot the man upstairs gives to me.....

(Dec. 8) -- Republicans who helped capture control of Congress 12 years ago blame the party's leaders for this year's debacle at the polls.

Architects of the 1994 "Republican revolution," as well as current and former lawmakers elected that year, say the GOP repelled voters by putting self-preservation before the nation's agenda. "For the first six years of the 12 years, we were focused on policy and principles, and politics was secondary," says Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, a member of the 1994 class who won his seventh term this month. "The second six years, politics became primary: raising money, going negative, consolidating power."

"We did more good work the first 12 hours we were in Congress than the Republicans have done in the past five years," says Joe Scarborough, a class of '94 member who resigned in 2001 and is a talk-show host. "Republican leaders who took us to the point we are right now should be ashamed."

Two-thirds of the 73-member Republican class of 1994 are gone from the House of Representatives. Twenty-four kept their House seats despite this year's rout, in which Democrats gained simultaneous House and Senate majorities for the first time since 1994. Five lost their bids for a seventh term. Two others resigned in disgrace.

Most members interviewed from the class of 1994, as well as former House GOP leaders, cite three reasons beyond their leaders' control: the war in Iraq, corruption scandals and President Bush's low popularity. Beyond that, they say leaders such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and former House majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas put staying in power above principles such as limited government and low spending.

"The Republicans have stopped being reformers," says former congressman John Kasich of Ohio, a close ally of former speaker Newt Gingrich. "They're tired, they're worn out, and they're practicing politics as usual."

Rep. Dan Lungren of California, who returned to Congress last year after a 16-year absence, warned of the demise in a closed meeting of House Republicans last year. He noted the Capitol halls were lined with lobbyists who expected to get what they asked for. "We had succumbed to the temptation of things that we had criticized the Democrats for," he says.

Former House majority leader Dick Armey of Texas says regaining a majority won't be easy. "The job of the Republicans after this election is going to be once again to convince the American people that we are the conservative party that the Democrats pretended to be," he says.

Needs of Urban Areas Weren't Being Met

J .C. Watts imagines average workers at a water cooler, average families at a kitchen table. Republicans, he says, have stopped addressing their needs.

The former four-term Oklahoma congressman says he saw it coming before he walked away from his political career in 2003 to launch J.C. Watts Companies, a consulting firm.

The party wasn't meeting the needs of the poor and urban areas, he says. Instead, it was fixated on "push-button issues," such as abortion and flag burning.

In 1994, when he was elected, the Contract with America offered "something tangible," Watts says. In 2006, the message had become: "The Democrats will be worse."

"Being against (incoming House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi's plan is not a plan," he says.

"We lost our way, pure and simple," says Watts, 49. "When ego and power mesh, it's a very dangerous thing." His solution is simple: Address issues that matter to people

Comeback Will Take a Bit of Relating Like Reagan

A national wave swept Rep. Gil Gutknecht into Congress in 1994. Another swept him out this year.

Gutknecht, 55, a student of history, says part of it was just zeitgeist - the spirit of the times. "People had just worn a little bit weary of Republican rule," he says.

The six-term Minnesota congressman, one of five members of his class to lose this year, also is a salesman. In recent years, he says, the GOP "began to sort of ignore the customers" on issues ranging from Medicare prescription drug coverage to pork-barrel spending.

Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher "said many years ago, 'First you win the debate, then you win the vote,' " he says. "The leadership decided a long time ago they weren't going to win the debate. They were just going to break knuckles to win the vote."

To come back, he says, Republicans must frame issues "the way Ronald Reagan did - you take conservative principles and wrap them in an optimistic, friendly language

Limited government? To some it seemed like no government

Zach Wamp's Republican Party believes in limited government. Recently, however, it gave people something closer to no government, he says.

Republicans' response to Hurricane Katrina hurt, Wamp says.

So, too, did his party's reluctance to exercise oversight on issues such as the war in Iraq.

"We began to be focused much more on money and the consolidation of power than we were the policy and the principle that brought us into the majority," says Wamp, 49, who won a seventh term from Tennessee this month. "We had become more interested in winning politically than doing the right thing."

To win back the majority, Wamp says, the party needs to focus on issues and principles, not politics. That could mean fighting with their own president.

"You can't just go along with the executive branch," he says, "even if they're from your party."

Values preached weren't practiced; public not offered clear message

One thing about Bob Barr: You always knew where he stood.

Not so today's Republican Party, says the former four-term Georgia congressman, perhaps Congress' biggest defender of personal liberty during his tenure. After leaving in 2003, he became president and CEO of Liberty Strategies, a public policy consulting firm.

Barr says Republicans lost because they had no clear message: They preached fiscal austerity but practiced pork-barrel spending. They preached privacy rights but tried, against her husband's wishes, to keep alive a Florida woman (Terri Schiavo) in a persistent vegetative state.

"They articulated no vision or agenda," Barr says. "The public was receiving mixed signals: talk of conservative government, and action that was big government by any measure."

To turn things around, Barr, 58, says the GOP should develop creative solutions to problems such as health care and immigration - and "get some real leaders."

A Fatal Flaw: Not Dealing With Pocketbook Issues

Rep. Mark Souder proudly calls himself a "hard-core" conservative. He doesn't think Republicans lost the House majority they won in 1994 by forgetting their roots.

Rather, Souder says, the party got swept out of the Northeast and other regions by not addressing pocketbook concerns: health care, energy, college tuition, pensions.

It's fine to cut budgets, Souder says, but "the way we held power was also being sensitive to our districts." The Republican class of '94, for which he served as vice president, carefully placed its members on key panels that would help them win federal aid. Seven remain on the Appropriations Committee.

"To survive through 12 years and then a tsunami, most of those members have made some adaptations," he says. His prescription for the future: update conservatism.

"How would Ronald Reagan behave in this environment?" says Souder, 56, who won a seventh term from Indiana. The party, he says, needs "a different appeal."

The payment-card industry is charging into one of the last bastions of consumer business that has been slow to accept plastic: utilities.

In the past year, a number of large natural-gas and electric providers have begun allowing residential customers to pay their bills with credit and debit cards. Utilities are dropping their longstanding opposition to plastic as new competition looms in states that have deregulated the former monopolies. To help hang on to customers, the utility industry is searching for ways to make bill-paying faster and easier.

California's Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a unit of PG&E Corp., is launching a pilot program this week in which it will accept Visa-branded credit, debit and prepaid cards (which are purchased with funds already loaded onto them) over the telephone and on its Web site. In Michigan, Consumers Energy, a unit of CMS Energy Corp., recently began accepting Visa card payments, after hearing for years from customers clamoring for the service. Other big utilities to drop their barriers to plastic include Houston-based Reliant Energy Inc., FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, Ohio, and Salt River Project, which provides electricity in Arizona.

The moves come at a time when consumers are paying more of their monthly bills with credit and debit cards. Nearly 40% of U.S. households have at least one recurring monthly payment that is automatically linked to a credit card, according to MasterCard Inc. research. But only about 15% of consumers regularly pay their utility bills with a credit or debit card, according to the data. Such payments are convenient, because they are handled electronically. They also bring added perks for consumers who hoard credit-card rewards points.

Jeffrey Appel, a lawyer in Huntington Woods, Mich., already pays his phone, newspaper and cable television bills with a credit card. To pay his Consumers Energy bill, however, he stops by the company's payment center and pays in person. Now, Mr. Appel says he plans to take advantage of the utility's new card program. It's a "no-brainer, because you can get miles," or air-travel rewards points, which are offered by many cards based on the amount of purchases.

But the credit-card payment option can also result in added costs for some consumers. "If you pay with a credit card and don't pay off your balance, you'll wind up paying interest on your utilities," says George Feld, a Consumers Energy customer in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Indeed, annual interest rates on unpaid credit-card balances can be more than 20%. One way to avoid that risk: Consumers can choose to pay by debit card, which draws money directly from a checking account.

In recent years, payment cards have made inroads into new markets, including fast-food chains, grocery stores and local dry cleaners. Industry data have repeatedly shown that Americans now use plastic more often than checks and cash. But the utility industry, which collects some $180 billion in payments each year, has been particularly challenging for the card companies to penetrate.

Part of the difficulty has been in persuading utility executives that cards are worthwhile. The card companies typically promote the use of plastic by telling merchants that consumers who use cards often spend more than cash-paying customers. That argument doesn't work for utilities, as people don't buy more power when they pay their bills with a credit card.

What's more, accepting payments by plastic can be expensive for merchants who must pay fees to the card-issuing financial institutions, buy new equipment and maintain strict security standards. While many merchants can pass on some of those costs by incorporating them into the prices of the goods they sell, utilities typically need permission from regulators to raise rates. Those government agencies are unlikely to approve across-the-board rate increases for a service that mightn't appeal to all utility customers.

"Utilities tell us that they can't justify raising their rates in order to accept our cards," says Jim Eitler, vice president of merchant relations at Visa USA Inc.

To overcome those hurdles, Visa and MasterCard are courting utilities with lower fees. (Both card networks set the fees that card-issuing banks charge merchants.) Under a plan introduced by Visa last year, utilities pay a flat 75 cents for any debit-card or credit-card transaction. At Consumers Energy, where the average monthly bill is about $200, that works out to 0.375%. By comparison, a gas station pays 0.7% plus 17 cents for each Visa debit-card purchase, and more than twice that amount when a Visa credit card is used.

San Francisco-based Visa has also launched a consulting service to help utilities update their computer systems, train customer-service representatives and set up billing programs. Visa estimates that more than 3,500 utilities nationwide now accept its cards, roughly a third of the industry when companies like municipal water utilities and neighborhood heating-oil businesses are added into the mix. By contrast, Visa says 95% of gasoline stations and 82% of food stores accept its cards for payments.

Like Visa, MasterCard also has a team dedicated to finding ways for utilities to accept card payments. "There are certain challenges in the industry, but we're working carefully with a number of players within the category to form a stronger relationship in terms of how we can provide a good solution for them," says Steve Carnevale, a vice president at Purchase, N.Y.-based MasterCard.

Still, some utilities continue to oppose accepting plastic payments. Ameren Corp., which provides electricity and natural gas in Missouri and Illinois, doesn't want to handle confidential customer information, says Mike Cleary, a spokesman for the utility. "We review it every year. It's always something we're considering," Mr. Cleary says of Ameren's policy on plastic. However, the company does allow its customers to pay by card if they use a special third-party service that charges a convenience fee, currently $3.50 per transaction. Other utilities have similar relationships with third-party vendors.

PG&E recently got a taste of competitive threat. The company last month fought off an effort by Sacramento's municipal utility to expand into PG&E's service area. The company, which has vowed to improve its customer service, hopes to attract at least 200,000 customers to its card-payment option during the 18-month pilot test.

Meanwhile, Consumers Energy plans to offset some of the costs associated with its card-payment program by cutting down on postage expenses. It is requiring plastic-paying customers to sign up for electronic billing, where payments are charged automatically. In the first week, some 2,000 customers signed up for payments by card. The utility plans soon to launch a big marketing and advertising campaign tied to the new service.

i'll make a few predictions and maybe print a few life stories here and there but i'm done printing news articles here blogwise.i mainly did it so i could catch up on a story or two later in the week when i had time to read when i was off plus i figured others here were interested which i know from the feedback i got.don't want to get ourselves in any mess by doing something that might come back to cause a problem.i'm one of those type people i tend to be misunderstood sometimes.i don't want to cause any issues so it will cease IMMEDIATELY.i really haven't sat and thought about it.if i'm allowed to print the name and the source along with the story and i'm told its ok to do it that way then i might continue to do it but in the meantime i'm confused on the issue so i'll stop for the time being.no harm no foul.

todd told me this morning in my last blog entry to not put something that is copyrighted in my blog and that it didn't look like i wrote it????  i have been putting news stories here sometimes.are we not allowed to do that?

World War III is a term used to describe a hypothetical conflict on the scale of World War II or larger. Most usages of the term assume the use of weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons or biological weapons.

 Historical close calls

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, an apocalyptic war between the United States and the USSR was considered likely. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 is generally thought to be the historical point at which the risk of World War III was closest. Other potential starts have included the following (see External links below for further examples):

• 1948-1949 - Berlin Blockade: The USSR blockaded Western Berlin in an attempt to remove America, France and Great Britain from Berlin. Some American politicians suggested an invasion of East Germany, however Truman was dissuaded from this by analysts saying that the risk and fallout of WWIII would be too great. (The Allies dealt with the Berlin Blockade with the Berlin Airlift, which was ultimately successful).
• July 26, 1956 - March, 1957 - Suez Crisis: The conflict pitted Egypt against an alliance between the French Fourth Republic, the United Kingdom and Israel. When the USSR threatened to intervene on behalf of Egypt, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson feared a larger war and persuaded the British and French to withdraw. The Eisenhower administration, fearing a wider war, had applied pressure to the United Kingdom to withdraw, including a threat to create a currency crisis by dumping US holdings of British debt.
• October 27, 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis: The conflict pitted the United States against an alliance between the USSR and Cuba. The USSR was attempting to place several launch sites in Cuba in response to the United States installation of missiles in Turkey. The United States response included dispersal of Strategic Air Command bombers to civilian airfields around the United States and war games in which the United States Marine Corps landed against a dictator named "ORTSAC" (Castro spelt backwards). For a brief while, the U.S. military went to DEFCON 3, while SAC went to DEFCON 2. The crisis peaked on October 27, when a U-2 (piloted by Rudolph Anderson) was shot down over Cuba and another U-2 flight over Russia was almost intercepted when it strayed over Siberia, after Curtis LeMay (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff) had neglected to enforce Presidential orders to suspend all overflights.
• October 24, 1973 - Yom Kippur War: As the Yom Kippur War was winding down, a Soviet threat to intervene on Egypt's behalf caused the United States to go to DEFCON 3.
• November 9, 1979 - False 'Soviet First Strike' Alarm: The US made emergency retaliation preparations after NORAD saw on-screen indications that a full-scale Soviet attack had been launched. No attempt was made to use the "red telephone" hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR and it was not until early-warning radar systems confirmed no such launch had taken place that NORAD realized that a computer system test had caused the display errors. A Senator inside the NORAD facility at the time described an atmosphere of absolute panic. A GAO investigation led to the construction of an off-site test facility, to prevent similar mistakes subsequently.
• September 26, 1983 - False 'US First Strike' Alarm: Soviet early warning systems showed that a US ICBM attack had been launched. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, in command of the monitoring facility, correctly put the warning down to computer error and did not notify his superiors.
• November 1983 - Exercise Able Archer: The USSR mistook a test of NATO's nuclear-release procedures as a fake cover for a NATO attack and subsequently raised its nuclear alert level. It was not until afterwards that the US realized how close it had come to nuclear war. At the time of the exercise the Soviet Politburo was without a healthy functioning head due to the failing health of then leader Yuri Andropov, which is thought to have been one of the contributing factors to the Soviet concern over the exercise.
• January 25, 1995 - Norwegian Rocket Incident: A Norwegian missile launch for scientific research was detected from Spitsbergen and thought to be an attack on Russia, launched from a submarine five minutes away from Moscow. Norway had notified the world that it would be making the launch, but the Russian Defense Ministry had neglected to notify those monitoring Russia's nuclear defense systems.

In addition to the above there are two other points during the Cold War that could have resulted in world war. These, however, are not generally listed as they do not relate to the United States-Soviet Union rivalry, but rather the events following the Sino-Soviet Split of 1960. The ideological split between Maoist communists (represented primarily by China) and Stalinist communists (represented primarily by the Soviet Union) divided the entire communist movement worldwide — which controlled governments or significant rebel factions on most continents. Thus a war between China and the Soviet Union may well have resulted in world war, while not necessarily involving the U.S. and the capitalist west. The two points the communist powers almost entered into all-out war over were:

• March 1969, when border clashes broke out between Soviet and Chinese troops over Zhen Bao Island in the Ussuri River (Sino-Soviet border conflict). In total, the Soviets suffered about 90 casualties to 800 for the Chinese (these numbers are based on Soviet claims). At the time there were almost one and a half million troops deployed along the border.
• 1978 and 1979, in which pro-Soviet Vietnam invaded pro-China Cambodia and removed Pol Pot. China in turn invaded Vietnam in retaliation and the Soviets denounced this action strongly, although it fell short of taking action. The next year the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Chinese claimed this was a continuation of a strategy of encircling China with Soviet allies that had begun the previous year with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

Finally, since the end of the Cold War, there have been at least two points in the decades-long conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir which almost escalated into nuclear conflict.

Hi-light any text by holding down the left click button and rollin over the text. Once it's hi-lighted , then right on it and choose copy, then go to any other page and right click and choose paste. If you want to copy a complete page the right on a page and click "select all" it'll hi-light the whole page for you....

someone taught me this in december of 2005.i think it was knoformthismfs.i'll put it here because it helps others.it helped me a lot....

The 2008 race is morphing so fast that four possible candidates have already dropped out. Then there's the X factor - the unprecedented front-loading of primaries and caucuses that will make it more difficult than ever for a dark horse to come out of nowhere and take the nomination.

This election is going to be "the mother of them all," Democratic adviser James Carville declared at a political conference last week. He marvels at the array of "larger than life people" definitely or possibly mounting campaigns - John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, and "to make it interesting," Newt Gingrich. These are people who "change the temperature of the room" when they walk in, Mr. Carville says.

It may be a sign of the vulnerabilities of both putative front-runners - Senators McCain (R) and Clinton (D) - that so many other people are talking about running, but in the end, many political oddsmakers are still betting that today's front-runners end up facing off in November 2008. And the size of the field is likely to shrink fast.

This is good news, at least, for most news organizations, which don't have the staff to follow dozens of Oval Office wannabes all over Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, not to mention Michigan, Florida, and California, which are taking steps to hold early primaries, too.

"A big field will become a little field very quickly," says Jack Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, Calif. "I suspect a lot of the people talking of running now or even announcing exploratory committees will flunk the invisible primary."

He refers to the early fundraising, polls, and media attention that indicate whether a candidate is viable.

For now, it's the Democratic world that's buzzing, as the charismatic Senator Obama starts making moves toward a possible run; he delivers his first speech in New Hampshire next Sunday. Obama's maneuvering may have quickened the pace of other hopefuls' moves, though they deny it.

Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa has become the first fully announced Democratic candidate. Over the weekend Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana announced an exploratory committee. Team Hillary has whispered to the media that the senator is lining up support among top Democrats in New York for an increasingly likely run.

For a candidate like Governor Vilsack, who is not widely known nationally, the early rollout has provided him some time in the spotlight that will become increasingly difficult to commandeer.

His next task is to raise enough money to mount at least a minimal campaign, in the hopes that he catches fire as an outsider alternative to the top-billed senators he faces. As a governor, with roots in both Pennsylvania and Iowa and a life story that stresses overcoming adversity, he can tout executive experience that has made other governors successful presidential candidates. But even he acknowledges that he is a long shot.

"As a sheer matter of math, the more candidates, the lower the odds," says William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston. "For long shots, the question is, can you get a bare minimum amount of attention to break through to the public consciousness."

Just how much money a candidate needs to raise in the first quarter of 2007 is open to debate, but a common benchmark is $30 million. Obama would probably be able to hit that mark; Clinton would have little trouble raising several times that; former Vice President Gore also still has his network. Beyond those three, access to big money is dubious; there's a lot out there, but it's not infinite.

Top advisers are also limited in supply, and will soon be married up to one candidate or another, if they aren't already.

The possible expansion of the early primary and caucus calendar will also favor those with big war chests. If Vilsack stays in the race until the Iowa caucuses, his presence as a native son could diminish the importance of that race, which would add even more clout to the New Hampshire primaries. And even though New Hampshire Democrats are upset that the national party has added early nominating contests in Nevada and South Carolina, New Hampshire's key role remains in place. The same will hold true if Michigan, California, and Florida move up their primaries to just after New Hampshire's.

Assuming that New Hampshire maintains its status as the first primary state, then the additional front-loading could serve to enhance New Hampshire's clout.

"If you are anybody but Hillary, your only chance of breaking out of the pack is in New Hampshire," says Mr. Mayer. "You can't say, 'It's OK if I come in fifth in New Hampshire; I'll emerge by doing well in California.' "

So the race is on to see who becomes Clinton's top challenger. For now, the excitement is around Obama. If he runs and does not stumble, there may not be enough political oxygen left for any of the other Democrats running or thinking of running or being urged to run.

By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Dec. 3) - Magic is in the air around the Tennessee Titans . Just ask Rob Bironas. Bironas kicked a 60-yard field goal - the franchise's longest ever - with 7 seconds left, and the Titans upset Indianapolis  20-17 Sunday for their first victory over the Colts  since December 2002 and their second straight amazing comeback.

The team that tied for the NFL's second-biggest comeback in the final 10 minutes last week against the New York Giants  struck again Sunday against the Colts (10-2), who had lost only four of their previous 36 games.

With the wind at his back, Bironas needed every gust to lift the longest field goal in his short career over the crossbar for his second consecutive game-winning kick. He became the sixth kicker in NFL history to connect from 60 yards or better.

"I needed that wind behind me today," Bironas said. "It was all at my back ... I let the wind take it the rest of the way."

Peyton Manning  said the wind was a big factor for the Titans in the fourth quarter, and never bigger than on Bironas' field goal.

"The guy made a heck of a kick," Manning said.

The Titans (5-7) didn't trail by 21 this time, but they were down 14-0 in the first half before starting this comeback with 10 points just before halftime. They intercepted Manning twice, and Vince Young threw for two touchdowns and used his legs to help keep the ball away from the two-time NFL MVP.

Indianapolis needed a victory to clinch the division for a club-record fourth straight year and its seventh playoff berth in eight years. Seemingly easy enough for a franchise that had won 12 straight divisional games coming into Sunday.

Instead, the Colts blew a 14-point lead for the first time coach Tony Dungy  could remember and lost to the Titans for the first time in eight games.

"They make a 60-yard field goal, and you take your hat off to them. We put ourselves in that position where a field goal beats you, and it did," Dungy said.

After Bironas' kick - he made a 49-yarder with 6 seconds left to beat the Giants  - Tennessee still had to kick the ball back to the Colts. Manning never got his hands on it again. Bryan Fletcher caught the kickoff, lateraled to Marvin Harrison, who tossed to Kelvin Hayden, who was tackled, running the last seconds off the clock.

The Titans then swarmed each other on the field, celebrating with the fans who didn't want to leave.

"Last week was a big step for us," Titans receiver Drew Bennett  said. "We think we can do anything."

Tennessee has improved on last year's 4-12 record by winning five of its last seven and building lots of confidence.

"This team is crazy because we can come out and play the worst in the league, and we can come out and beat the best in the league," said Titans punter Craig Hentrich, who held for the winning kick. "At this point, I don't think there's anything but good coming out of this team the rest of the year."

Indianapolis outgained Tennessee 451-382, but the Colts only had the ball for a little more than 12 minutes in the second half, gaining only 47 yards in the third quarter.

The big stop came late in the fourth quarter.

The Titans, allowing the most yards in the NFL, forced Indianapolis to settle for a tying field goal after facing first-and-goal at the Tennessee 1 late in the fourth quarter. They stopped Joseph Addai  for a 1-yard loss, then Manning tossed an apparent TD to Ben Utecht, only to see the tight end flagged for pass interference. That backed up the Colts to the 12, and Manning overthrew Reggie Wayne .

Asked about the penalty, Manning asked the reporter to tell him what happened.

"Can you get fined by the officials for saying something like that? ... I didn't see it. Obviously a shame was what that was. (We) still had a chance to score after that and didn't do it," Manning said.

Manning then scrambled for 5 yards and lateraled to Addai, who was stopped at the 2 on third-and-goal. Adam Vinatieri  kicked a 20-yard field goal and tied the game at 17 with 2:38 to go.

Young, who drove the Titans 95 yards in 11 plays, put them ahead 17-14 with a 9-yard pass to Brandon Jones in the fourth quarter. He then set up Bironas for the longest field goal since Al Del Greco's 56-yarder against San Francisco  on Oct. 27, 1996, by moving 33 yards in nine plays.

The rookie quarterback finished 12-of-25 for 163 yards, and scrambled nine times for 78 yards, his biggest day rushing this year.

Manning finished 21-for-28 for 351 yards and a 68-yard touchdown pass to Harrison, who had seven receptions for 172 yards.

wanna know what irritates me more than anything these days?

lateness.people being very late or not showing up at all.i'm soon to be going into my seventh year on the same post in my security job.i really like the post but after staying there 13 hours i'm ready to come home.got a new "co-worker" on the weekends.he has been there for three weeks.first sunday he was 45 minutes late.the second sunday he was 5 minutes late.this week the idiot didn't even show up and i was relieved an hour into my shift by a replacement.the first couple times it was due to "car trouble".wonder what the excuse will be this week.i have powers over the employees who come in.i think i'm going to call the main office and tell them to cut the person loose.let him go somewhere else and do that.

TEMPE, Ariz. (Dec. 2) - City leaders have apologized after a program on Tempe's cable channel showed a white police officer telling two black men they could get out of a littering ticket by performing a rap.

Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman and Police Chief Tom Ryff apologized for the show Thursday and suspended its future production after black community leaders voiced outrage and disappointment.

"I accept responsibility for the actions of my staff and apologize to any members of our community who have been offended," Ryff said during a news conference Friday.

The segment appeared on "Tempe StreetBeat," a program produced by police in the Phoenix suburb that followed several officers on patrol. It shows Sgt. Chuck Schoville pulling over two men in August in a mall parking lot.

He first asks for a name and ID from the driver and then asks the two men if they know how much the fine is for littering.

The officer then tells the men that they can avoid getting a littering ticket "if the two of you just do a little rap about - what do you want to do a rap about? Littering? About the dangers of littering."

The two men agree, and each performs a short rap, laughing afterward. One says, "The dangers of littering, you will get a ticket. If you ain't wit' it, you better be experienced."

The second man raps, "Yo, I just got pulled over 'cause I threw my trash out the window when they rolled over. They got behind me and pulled me over."

Later, Schoville talks football with the men, one of whom agrees with his prediction that the Oakland Raiders will make it to the Super Bowl this year.

Schoville then says, "You know why you say I'm right? Because I got a gun and badge. I'm always right. That's the way it works, right?" The three laugh and the two men get in their car.

Leaders of chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Action Network expressed outrage and demanded that the city act.

The Rev. Jarrett Maupin of the National Action Network, who was at Friday's news conference, said he had accepted Hallman's and Ryff's apologies and intends to make sure the police department makes good on a proposal for an African American advisory board and increased diversity training.

"It's important for police officers to realize that black people do not speak hip hop," Maupin said. "We're not all rappers and thugs and gangbangers. We speak the English language and we're entitled to the same amount of respect."

Ryff said the department is investigating how the video got on the air, who watched it and who edited it. He wouldn't discuss whether there would be any punishment for those involved.

The chief said that he hadn't been able to contact Schoville, a 25-year veteran of the Tempe force, because the officer is on vacation. A message was left with the department seeking comment from the sergeant.

Because the men in the video were not cited, Tempe police had no record of their names.

BOSTON (Nov. 30) - A Massachusetts man fired for smoking while off duty has sued his former company, saying its policy of not employing smokers serves no business purpose and that a urine test for nicotine violates privacy rights, his lawyer said Thursday.

Scott Rodrigues was fired by Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. after a mandatory urine test showed evidence of nicotine in his system, lawyer Harvey Schwartz said. The lawsuit filed in Massachusetts state court Wednesday seeks unspecified damages against the supplier of lawn and garden products.

"Whether or not he smokes has no impact on his job performance," said Schwartz.

He said he was aiming to have Massachusetts declare Scotts' policy illegal. "The company seems fairly messianic in its desire not to employ smokers," the lawyer said.

The lawsuit said Rodrigues, 30, never smoked at work and noted that Scotts' health-related policies do not restrict "skydiving ... owning dangerous pets ... or spreading toxic chemicals on lawns."

The suit claimed Scotts had no right to test Rodrigues' urine for nicotine, since smoking outside the office is legal.

Scotts in December adopted a policy of not hiring smokers, citing the high costs of providing them with health insurance.

Jim King, a vice president at Marysville, Ohio-based Scotts, said the company has not seen the lawsuit and he could not address it. But he did comment on the policy.

"While we're not interested in dictating our employees' behavior in their free time, we look at smoking differently," King said. "Smoking is completely incompatible with a culture that's trying to improve wellness."

Several U.S. states have banned smoking at work, restaurants and bars.

While employers may restrict smoking in the workplace, most U.S. states have laws preventing companies from refusing to employ people who smoke outside the office. Massachusetts is one of about 20 states that does not have such a law.

Other major U.S. companies with policies limiting the hiring of smokers include Union Pacific Corp and Alaska Air Group Inc.

One legal expert said Rodrigues would have a hard time proving his case, due to Massachusetts employment laws.

"The basic rule of employment at will is you can fire someone for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all as long as it's not on the list of prohibited reasons," said Katharine Silbaugh, a visiting professor at the Harvard School of Law. "You don't like the Red Sox? I can fire you for that. You smoke? I can fire you for that."