Casino reopening marks beginning of recovery -- CNN

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excerpt ..
Vicksburg, Mississippi (CNN) -- In a part of Mississippi drenched by overwhelming floods, a glimmer of hope lit up Wednesday. Authorities in Tunica reopened a casino with an employee pep rally.

"We believe that reopening our doors and putting our friends and families back to work as quickly as possible is an important step on the road to recovery," the leaders of Gold Strike Casino and Resort said in a statement.

Casinos are a critical economic driver in the region. Nine were closed due to the flooding of the Mississippi River, said Bill Canter, spokesman for the Tunica Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Three will reopen by the weekend, he said.
But the area still has a long road ahead before full recovery.

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Casino reopening marks beginning of recovery - CNN
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 18, 2011 - 2:09p

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Arnold's Baby Mom & Maria -- Preggo at Same Time - TMZ

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Maria Shriver and Mildred Patricia Baena were both pregnant with Arnold's children ... AT THE SAME TIME.

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Arnold's Baby Mom & Maria -- Preggo at Same Time - TMZ
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 18, 2011 - 1:43p

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Arnold's Baby Mama Baby Shower - TMZ

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We're told Arnold and Maria sent lots of gifts for the baby.
The boy -- now a young teen -- looks like the spitting image of Arnold.

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Arnold's Baby Mama Baby Shower - TMZ
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 18, 2011 - 1:31p

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Charles Barkley: Heat a 'whiny bunch' -- ESPN

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CHICAGO -- Charles Barkley thinks the Miami Heat have "terrific players," but when it comes to the team getting defensive about people taking shots at them, he calls them "a whiny bunch."

Barkley is in Chicago with TNT to cover the Eastern Conference finals between the Chicago Bulls and the Heat, and he said there was a time Heat forward LeBron James wasn't very happy with Barkley's analysis of "The Decision," which was the ESPN-televised event of James announcing he was leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami.
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"But him and his guys think because some of us didn't like that 'Decision' thing -- that was silly -- they got mad about that. Like wait a minute, I always said it's nothing personal, that thing was silly. We say he's the best player in the world, but you guys are mad because we criticized 'The Decision.'"

Barkley, who praised James and his teammates Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh as great players and individuals, also had a problem with the celebration the Heat staged after all three decided to join forces in Miami last summer. The celebration included James talking about winning as many as seven titles.

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Charles Barkley: Heat a 'whiny bunch' -- ESPN
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 18, 2011 - 12:43p

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Hope for Auburn? Toxic trustee Bobby Lowder steps aside -- Mark Bradley/AJC

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Yet another big story breaks over the Loveliest Village of the Plains, and this one has the feel of a new dawn rising. The toxic Bobby Lowder has decided not to seek another term on Auburn’s board of trustees. The first two words of an editorial in the Opelika-Auburn News were these:

“Good riddance.”

It was hard to know exactly how much power Lowder wielded over Auburn athletics because his modus operandi was to be seen but seldom heard. But I once asked another SEC athletic director who could be classified as his school’s Bobby Lowder, and the AD thought for several moments. Then he said:
“I’m not sure anywhere else has a Bobby Lowder.”

Conventional wisdom holds that Lowder, an Auburn grad who came to power as head of the Montgomery-based Colonial BancGroup (seized by the Feds in 2009), essentially fired Terry Bowden as football coach in the middle of the 1998 season and almost fired Tommy Tuberville  five years later. It was a plane owned by Lowder’s bank that made the infamous flight to Sellersburg, Ind., carrying Auburn officials to interview then-Louisville coach Bobby Petrino — for a job that was technically not open.

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Hope for Auburn? Toxic trustee Bobby Lowder steps aside -- Mark Bradley/AJC
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 18, 2011 - 12:17p

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Coast Guard closes Miss. River at Natchez

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Record flooding has caused authorities to close the Mississippi River at the port in Natchez because barge traffic could put more pressure on the levees.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough said the port was closed Monday, leaving two vessels waiting to head north and one waiting to go south. The U.S. economy could face a bill running into the hundreds of millions of dollars a day if the lower Mississippi River is closed to shipping for days or weeks, port officials said. It wasn't clear when the river would reopen to traffic.

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Coast Guard closes Miss. River at Natchez - WWL.com
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 17, 2011 - 12:41p

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Schwarzenegger fathered a child with longtime member of household staff - LATimes

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Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, separated after she learned he had fathered a child more than a decade ago — before his first run for office — with a longtime member of their household staff.

Shriver moved out of the family's Brentwood mansion earlier this year, after Schwarzenegger acknowledged the paternity. The staff member worked for the family for 20 years, retiring in January.

"After leaving the governor's office I told my wife about this event, which occurred over a decade ago," Schwarzenegger said Monday night in a statement issued to The Times in response to questions. "I understand and deserve the feelings of anger and disappointment among my friends and family. There are no excuses and I take full responsibility for the hurt I have caused. I have apologized to Maria, my children and my family. I am truly sorry.

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Schwarzenegger fathered a child with longtime member of household staff - LATimes
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 17, 2011 - 12:31p

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How The Drudge Report got popular and stayed on top - NYTimes

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By far, most of the traffic from links comes from the sprawling hybrid of Google search and news, which provides about 30 percent of the visits to news sites, according to a report released last week by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, part of the Pew Research Center. And the second? Has to be Facebook, right? Nope. Then Twitter must be the next in line. Except it isn’t.

Give up? It’s The Drudge Report, a 14-year-old site — a relic by Web standards — conceived and operated by Matt Drudge. Using data from the Nielsen Company to examine the top 21 news sites on the Web, the report suggests that Mr. Drudge, once thought of as a hothouse flower of the Lewinsky scandal, is now more powerful in driving news than the half-billion folks on Facebook. (According to the study, Facebook accounted for 3.3 percent of the referrals to news sites, less than half as many as generated by The Drudge Report.)

“When you look at his influence, it cuts across all kind of sites, both traditional news outlets and online-only sites,” said Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism and one of the authors of the study. “He was an early and powerful force in setting the news agenda and has somehow maintained that even as there has been a great deal of change in the way people get their news.”

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How the Drudge Report got popular and stayed on top - NYTimes
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 16, 2011 - 7:22p

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Mike Huckabee casts big shadow over early primary states in 2012 elections

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Huckabee’s supporters now become one of the most coveted voting blocs in the still-unsettled Republican contest.

The former governor was at the top of early polling in Iowa and South Carolina and also faring well in many national surveys. His strength can be partly chalked up to name recognition this far out from voting, but his demographic appeal leaves a sizable void in the field: there is now no well-known candidate for Christian conservatives and middle-to-lower income Republicans.

A Pew poll in March showed that Huckabee led the field among white evangelicals, taking 29 percent of the vote to Romney’s 15 percent. The same survey showed Huckabee leading 23 percent to 18 percent over the wealthy former Massachusetts governor among those Republicans making less than $75,000 per year.

Huckabee’s decision “makes that base wide open for support,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the former Iowa gubernatorial candidate who led Huckabee’s 2008 campaign in the state.

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Mike Huckabee casts big shadow over early primary states in 2012 - Politico
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 15, 2011 - 11: 52p

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Mike Huckabee won’t run for President in 2012

Posted by The Meck

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Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will not run for president in 2012, taking himself out of contention despite polling that suggested he would be a strong player for the nomination.

“All the factors say go,” Huckabee said during a live, final segment of his eponymous Fox News Channel show. “But my heart says no.”

Huckabee noted that while all of the “external” factors pointed toward him running, he only found an “inexplicable inner peace” when he decided not to enter the race.

The announcement came at the conclusion of a show that took on a surreal feel. Huckabee’s no-go decision was preceded by an appearance by Mario Lopez — of “Saved by the Bell” fame — as well as musician Ted Nugent. Just prior to announcing he would not run, Huckabee played bass alongside Nugent on “Cat Scratch Fever”.

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Mike Huckabee won't run for President in 2012 - Washington Post / Chris Cilliza
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 14, 2011 - 8:19p 

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When baseball defied segregation off the field - Bill White/Special to CNN

Posted by The Meck

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(CNN) -- Everyone knows that Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball "color barrier" in 1947. But what many people today may not know is that while Jackie's courageous performance integrated major league baseball on the field, it took many more years of struggle to break the baseball color barrier off the field.

As a major league player with the New York Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1950s and '60s, I was part of that struggle.

It may be difficult for young people today to believe, but back then black players were often not allowed to eat in the same restaurants or stay in the same hotels or live in the same neighborhoods as their white teammates, not just in the "Jim Crow" South but in many places across the country.

For example, as the only black player on a minor league team in Iowa, I vividly remember having to eat my dinner on the team bus while my white teammates were eating in a "whites only" restaurant during a road trip in Kansas in 1954.

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When baseball defied segregation off the field - Bill White / Special to CNN
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 14, 2011 - 1:07p 

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Black Preacher: Why I Forgave George Wallace -- CNN

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Tuscaloosa, Alabama (CNN) - I had always heard the stories of Alabama Gov. George Wallace asking for forgiveness from the African-American community for his racist ways.

Yet I had never quite believed it, even if I had read accounts about it. The images of him standing at the door at the University of Alabama to prevent two black students from entering had been seared into my mind.

And so it was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon the Rev. Kelvin Croom amid the destruction left by Tuscaloosa’s recent tornado. The Croom family has been a pillar of the African-American community here for the last five decades.

Croom's father, the late Rev. Sylvester Croom Sr., founded College Hill Baptist Church and served as chaplain for the University of Alabama’s football teams under the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant and two other coaches. The elder Croom has been recognized as one of the state's 40 pioneers of civil rights.

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Black Preacher: Why I Forgave George Wallace -- CNN
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The Meck Report / Blog - May 14, 2011 - 12:47p 

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