Did the rulers of the ancient city of Teotihuacan dedicate their largest pyramid to the god of fire, the so-called old god with a signature beard and fire atop his head?

Mexican archaeologists announced this week that a figure of the god, called Huehueteotl, was found in a covered pit at the apex of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan, a popular archaeological site north of Mexico City.

Excavations are ongoing, but the discovery suggests that a long-disappeared temple at the top of the pyramid was used to perform ritual offerings to the fire god, Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said in a statement Monday.

Huehueteotl is known in the archaeology of various Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmecs and Aztecs, and the Aztecs' predecessors in the Valley of Mexico, the Teotihuacanos. He is commonly represented as a viejo, or old man, sitting in a cross-legged position, often with a beard and a beaked nose, and with a hearth-like source of fire balanced on his head. Huehueteotl is associated with wisdom and rulership.

Archaeologists found the Huehueteotl, along with two stone pillars, in a covered pit about 15 feet deep, at a height of about 214 feet from the ground. The pit is below the remnants of a platform at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun that probably served as the foundation for a temple.

The people of Teotihuacan finished building the pyramid around AD 100 and destroyed its apex temple themselves around the end of the 5th century or the beginning of the 6th century, INAH said.

Archaeologists did not know that a pit existed at the top of the stepped pyramid, renowned as one of the largest of its kind in the Americas. It is now thought that Leopoldo Batres, the pioneering archaeologist who restored the pyramid to the basic form seen today, covered the platform a century ago without properly excavating it.

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-firegod-pyramid-20130213,0,7555042.story

From his facebook today







More videos, latestnews, pictures from Russia
Link: http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/

its in english

Fox News misleadingly claimed that an increase in the minimum wage would harm small businesses. In fact, data show that small businesses in states with a higher minimum wage experience better economic performance and job growth.

However those are not the facts

Facts:
Center For American Progress: Data Show States With Increased Minimum Wage Had Higher Small Business Job Growth. A 2006 study by the Center for American Progress and Policy Matters Ohio compared small business performance between states using the federal minimum wage and states that had a higher minimum wage, and found that employment in small businesses grew more in states with a higher minimum wage. [Center for American Progress, May 2006]

Fiscal Policy Institute: "Indicators Of Economic Performance Were Consistently Better" In Higher Minimum Wage States For Small Business Job Growth. According to the Fiscal Policy Institute:

In examining state-level small business job growth, the best government data available permits a comparison of 1998 and 2003; the latter is the most recent year for which the data are available. For the 10 states and the District of Columbia that had set their minimum wages above the federal level for most of this period, indicators of economic performance were consistently better than for the other 40 states where the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour prevailed. [Fiscal Policy Institute, 3/30/06]

NYTimes: Small Business Owners In A State With Higher Minimum Wage "Have Prospered Far Beyond Their Expectations." According to The New York Times:


http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/02/13/fox-dubiously-claims-minimum-wage-increase-harm/192650

I think some DUers were
promoting Faux this morning.

A LETTER FROM KIM JONG-UN
Posted by Andy Borowitz


Dear World People:

For decades, North Korea was threatened by hostile foes with nuclear weapons. With our safety constantly at risk from violent intruders, we asked: How can we possibly defend ourselves? In the immortal words of my dad, the glorious Kim Jong-il: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

I sleep safely at night knowing that a loaded nuclear silo is as close as the launch button on my nightstand. And now I understand what Dad, in his genius, instinctively knew: that the world will not be truly safe until every nation has nuclear weapons.

Perhaps because these weapons are so necessary to our defense, the U.S. government, with its lapdogs at the United Nations, is plotting to take them away from us. But as Dad used to say, “When they come for our nukes….”

That is why today I am founding the Nuclear Retaliation Association to defend the sovereign right of every nation on the planet to engulf that planet in a hellish inferno. If you join today, we will waive the initiation fee and send you this bumper sticker: “Nuclear weapons don’t kill people. People kill people who don’t have nuclear weapons.”
Peace out,
Kim Jong-un


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/02/a-letter-from-kim-jong-un.html#ixzz2Kr9l6s1f

tips much appreciated







The audience of one responds

$11 million annual salary is “modest,” says bailed-out bankster Chairman



Only in the banking world could you expect to hear such nonsense as the chair of a bank suggesting that an $11 milion dollar annual salary (including bonus) is “modest.”

The Royal Bank of Scotland Chairman is trying to suggest that because other bank CEOs are paid even more, his CEO’s salary of nearly $2m a year, and potential bonus of over $9m, are “modest.”

http://americablog.com/2013/02/chairman-of-bailed-out-bank-multi-million-dollar-pay.html

$11 million annual salary is “modest,” says bailed-out bankster Chairman



Only in the banking world could you expect to hear such nonsense as the chair of a bank suggesting that an $11 milion dollar annual salary (including bonus) is “modest.”

The Royal Bank of Scotland Chairman is trying to suggest that because other bank CEOs are paid even more, his CEO’s salary of nearly $2m a year, and potential bonus of over $9m, are “modest.”

http://americablog.com/2013/02/chairman-of-bailed-out-bank-multi-million-dollar-pay.html

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a break with tradition, Tea Party Republicans issued their official rebuttal to tonight’s State of the Union address a full twelve hours before President Obama was scheduled to deliver it.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) appeared on Fox News Channel at 9 A.M. (E.T.) to read the rebuttal, which some historians called the most brutal response ever to a Presidential speech that had not yet been made.

Calling Mr. Obama’s speech “full of the same empty promises and bald-faced lies we’ve come to expect,” Sen. Paul added that “tonight Barack Obama made his case: for his own impeachment.”

Laced with sarcasm and invective, Sen. Paul’s rebuttal eviscerated Mr. Obama’s not-yet-given speech, ending with a call for the President to be tried for treason and banished from the U.S.

Roger Ailes, President of Fox News Channel, defended the decision to air a blistering attack on a speech that Mr. Obama was not scheduled to give for another twelve hours: “Our viewers are very unlikely to sit through Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Airing the rebuttal beforehand gives them a sense of what they would have thought was reprehensible about it.”

For his part, Sen. Paul made no apologies for calling a speech he had never actually heard “worthy of President Ahmadinejad.” “Look, if I had waited to listen to the speech, I bet I would have hated it even more.”


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/02/tea-party-issues-scathing-rebuttal-to-state-of-union-twelve-hours-before-speech.html#ixzz2KhUmBCTt

Former Vice President Dick Cheney defended President Obama’s policy on armed drone strikes, calling it a “good program” amid growing congressional scrutiny.
“I think it’s a good program and I don’t disagree with the basic policy that the Obama administration is pursuing now in those regards,” said Cheney in an interview with CBS News's Charlie Rose aired on Tuesday


Read more: http://thehill.com/video/in-the-news/282439-cheney-defends-obama-on-drone-strikes#ixzz2Kh69Nxhs


Well, Alrighty then if Dick says so

Source: aP

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Former Republican Party of Florida chairman Jim Greer pleaded guilty to theft and money laundering just before jury selection in his criminal trial got under way.

Jury selection was set to begin Monday, but neither Greer nor prosecutors appeared in the courtroom. The only sign of Greer's presence in the Orange County Courthouse was his wife and infant daughter.

Greer had earlier pleaded not guilty to allegations that he funneled almost $200,000 of party money into a company he had formed with his right-hand man.

Greer says party leaders were aware of the company and that his prosecution was political payback. Sentencing is March 27 and he faces up to 35 years in prison.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/headaches-fla-gop-ahead-ex-chiefs-trial-0