“When it comes to women, you are a true democrat”

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) to Police Prefect, Captain Louis Renaud, in the movie Casablanca

NEW YORK TIMES: Washington — The Justice Department has concluded that the Obama administration can lawfully pay the community group Acorn for services provided under contracts signed before Congress banned the government from providing money to the group.

The department’s conclusion, laid out in a recently disclosed five-page memorandum from David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, adds a new wrinkle to a sharp political debate over the antipoverty group’s activities and recent efforts to distance the government from it.

NEWSMAX: By Ronald Kessler–The fact that party crashers were allowed into a White House State Dinner without being on the guest list is emblematic of the Secret Service’s corner cutting detailed in my book, “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect.”

While the couple did pass through a magnetometer to detect weapons, they could have assassinated the president or vice president using other means—anthrax, for example. The additional security checks referred to by the Secret Service spokesman screen for such items as radiological contamination but would not detect secreted biological weapons.

The fact that the couple was allowed in in this dangerous age is a disgrace and is symptomatic of lax standards at the Secret Service ever since it was absorbed by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. Because of lack of adequate funding, a management culture that considers itself invincible, and spinelessness when it comes to standing up to demands by those under protection, including the White House itself, the Secret Service now takes chances that would have been unthinkable prior to its absorption into Homeland Security.

TELEGRAPH U.K.–Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore’s great big AGW conspiracy – just as the Aussie geologist and AGW skeptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia’s opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd’s Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.

The ETS is Australia’s version of America’s proposed Cap and Trade and the EU’s various carbon reduction schemes: a way of taxing business on its CO2 output. As Professor Plimer pointed out when interviewed this summer, this threatens to cause enormous economic damage in Australia’s industrial and mining heartlands, not least because both are massively dependent on Australia’s vast reserves of coal. It is correspondingly extremely unpopular with Aussie’s outside the pinko, libtard metropolitan fleshpots.

Though the ETS squeaked narrowly through Australia’s House of Representatives, its Senate is proving more robust – thanks not least to the widespread disgust by the many Senators who have read Professor Plimer’s book Heaven And Earth at the dishonesty and corruption of the AGW industry. If the Senate keeps rejecting the scheme, then the Australian government will be forced to dissolve.

For the rapidly increasing number of us who believe that AGW is little more than a scheme by bullying eco-fascists to deprive us of our liberty, by big government to spread its controlling tentacles into every aspect our lives, and scheming industrialists such as Al Gore to enrich themselves through carbon trading, this principled act by Australia’s Carbon Five is fantastic news.

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” — Eric Hoffer Thanx Rina

I pretty much ride on the center of the road, so I feel I can complain about anyone I want to and Sara Palin is one of them. Did you see the big deal Fox News made the other day about her book signing in Michigan and how there was such a crowd outside cheering for her and so many people that were so in favor of her. Turns out it was all BS, Fox News came out and apologized because it was a phony clip. They had dubbed in tape from 2008 presidential campaign to make it look more impressive.

If you read over that article I sent the other day about Palin’s book and how she glosses over issues really makes me wonder. The Mayor of Minneapolis and how many other mayors have more experience then she does, besides more people then the whole state of Alaska. Of coarse they can’t see Russia from some remote island.

I think Sara Palin fits in right along with Michele Bauchman and Nancy Pelosie. They are all full of S***.

THE HILL: A House bill still being drafted aims to raise $150 billion each year to pay for new jobs.

Under a bill being drafted by Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio (Ore.) and Ed Perlmutter (Colo.), the sale and purchase of financial instruments such as stocks, options, derivatives and futures would face a 0.25 percent tax. The bill, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, is titled the “Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009.”

Half of the $150 billion in tax revenue would go toward reducing the deficit, while the other half would be deposited in a “Job Creation Reserve” to support new jobs. The job fund would be available to offset the additional costs of the 2009 highway bill and other legislation that creates jobs…

FOX NEWS: President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents — spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.

In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion — $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush’s term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama’s.

That price tag came with a $1.4 trillion deficit, nearly $1 trillion more than last year. The overall budget was about a half-trillion more than Bush’s for 2008, his final full fiscal year in office.

PRINCETON, NJ — Since the start of his presidency, U.S. President Barack Obama’s approval rating has declined more among non-Hispanic whites than among nonwhites, and now, fewer than 4 in 10 whites approve of the job Obama is doing as president…

In his first full week in office (Jan. 26-Feb. 1), an average of 66% of Americans approved of the job Obama was doing, including 61% of non-Hispanic whites and 80% of nonwhites.

Obama leaves the White House clutching a copy of GQ magazine, featuring him.

Q: Have you heard about McDonalds new Obama Value Meal? A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.

“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Dutch philosopher

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) — California, Delaware, South Carolina and Florida registered record rates of unemployment in October as weakness in the labor market stretches from coast to coast and limits the economic recovery.

Joblessness rose in 29 U.S. states last month compared with 22 in September, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Michigan had the highest jobless rate at 15.1 percent, followed by Nevada at 13 percent and Rhode Island at 12.9 percent.

CNBC: As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed.

According to the government’s broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994.

The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for October, the highest it has been since June 1983.

The difference is that what is traditionally referred to as the “unemployment rate” only measures those out of work who are still looking for jobs. Discouraged workers who have quit trying to find a job, as well as those working part-time but looking for full-time work or who are otherwise underemployed, count in the U-6 rate.

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Not that it matters politically because obviously, she’s a female Republican dunce and he’s a male Democrat genius.

But Sarah Palin’s poll numbers are strengthening.

And President Obama’s are sliding.

Guess what? They’re about to meet in the 40s.

Depending, of course, on which recent set of numbers you peruse and how the questions are phrased, 307 days into his allotted 1,461, the 44th president’s approval rating among Americans has slid to 49% or 48%, showing no popularity bounce from his many happy trips, foreign and domestic.

Riding the wave of immense publicity and symbiotic media interest over her new book, “Going Rogue,” and the accompanying promotional tour, Palin’s favorable ratings are now at 43%, according to ABC. That’s up from 40% in July.

CBS NEWS: It’s been an ugly few years for the United States Postal Service. The quasi-government agency announced this week that it lost $3.8 billion in the most recent fiscal year, which ended September 30th. It also delivered less mail - 26 billion fewer pieces less, a nearly 13 percent drop from the previous year. The bad news follows losses totaling $7.8 billion in 2007 and 2008. The Postal Service, as it is quick to point out, is legally prohibited from taking tax

dollars. But in order to stay afloat, the agency has been actively borrowing from the U.S. Treasury: At last count, according to Postal Service spokeswoman Yvonne Yoerger, it owes the government $10.2 billion. Federal law dictates that the Postal Service can borrow up to $3 billion per year - but the debt cannot grow beyond $15 billion. That means that while the agency, which had revenues of $68.1 billion last year, could potentially borrow another $3 billion in 2010, it will soon no longer be able to legally borrow billions from the government. Meanwhile, the Postal Service is estimating that without significant changes, it will lose another $7.8 billion in the coming year - and deliver another 11 billion fewer pieces of mail. Which raises the question: Could the Postal Service be doomed?

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) — The most accurate dollar forecasters predict the world’s reserve currency will continue sliding even when the Federal Reserve begins to raise interest rates, which policy makers say is an “extended period” away.

Standard Chartered Plc, Aletti Gestielle SGR, HSBC Holdings Plc and Scotia Capital Inc. say the dollar will depreciate as much as 6.4 percent versus the euro. About $12 trillion of fiscal and monetary stimulus, the world’s lowest borrowing costs and a record $4 trillion of government bond sales between 2009 and 2010 will weigh on the currency, they said. So will the nation’s 10.2 (17.5%) percent unemployment rate and signs that the economic recovery may falter, they said.

The Anti-Obama billboard at 4855 Miller Street in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. (November 20, 2009)

WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. - Call it Freedom of Speech. A billboard recently erected in Wheat Ridge compares President Barack Obama to a terrorist and questions his U.S. citizenship. The billboard, located at 4855 Miller Road, shows two cartoonish images of Obama wearing a Muslim turban and reads “PRESIDENT or JIHAD?” It also says “BIRTH CERTIFICATE - PROVE IT!” alluding to the conspiracy theory which claims Barack Obama was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii, which would disqualify him for the office of President. The words “WAKE UP AMERICA! REMEMBER FT. HOOD!” appear on the bottom of the billboard. The sign belongs to a car dealership. (That figures) “Since Fort Hood, I’ve had it,” owner Phil West told FOX 31 News Friday. “You can’t suggest things. You can’t profile. You gotta call a spade a spade.” (Probably not the best choice of words)

GMA News:

WASHINGTON POST – David Broder: It’s simply not true that America is ambivalent about everything when it comes to the Obama health plan.

The day after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gave its qualified blessing to the version of health reform produced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Quinnipiac University poll of a national cross section of voters reported its latest results.

This poll may not be as famous as some others, but I know the care and professionalism of the people who run it, and one question was particularly interesting to me.

It read: “President Obama has pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. Do you think that President Obama will be able to keep his promise or do you think that any health care plan that Congress passes and President Obama signs will add to the federal budget deficit?”

Pass this on to your church, co-workers, family, and friends. What do you have to lose but 44 cents, what do you have to gain ———– more than you will ever know.

Yes, Christmas cards. This is coming early so that you can get ready to include an important address to your list. Want to have some fun this CHRISTMAS? Send the ACLU a CHRISTMAS CARD this year. (use an old one from last year) As they are working so very hard to get rid of the CHRISTMAS part of this holiday, we should all send them a nice, CHRISTIAN card to brighten up their dark, sad, little world… Make sure it says “Merry Christmas” on it. Here’s the address, just don’t be rude or crude. (It’s not the Christian way, you know.) ACLU 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York, NY 10004

Two tons of Christmas cards would freeze their operations because they wouldn’t know if any were regular mail containing contributions. So spend 44 cents and tell the ACLU to leave Christmas alone. Also tell them that there is no such thing as a ” Holiday Tree”. . .It’s always been called a CHRISTMAS TREE! And pass this on to your email lists. We really want to communicate with the ACLU! They really DESERVE us!! For those of you who aren’t aware of them, the ACLU, (the American Civil Liberties Union) is the one suing the U.S. Government to take God, Christmas or anything Christian away from us. They represent the atheists and others in this war. Help put Christ back in Christmas!

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL: WASHINGTON — Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin has forbidden Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy to receive the Roman Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion because of his advocacy of abortion rights, the Rhode Island Democrat said Friday.

“The bishop instructed me not to take Communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me Communion,” Kennedy said in a telephone interview.

HOLLYWOOD DEADLINE: Twilight Saga moviemaker Summit Entertainment said this morning that NEW MOON opened with a phenomenal performance of a gargantuan $140.7 million first weekend in North America and, $118.1M from 25 international markets from Wednesday through Sunday, and a worldwide 5-day total of $258.8M. These numbers may change as Sunday actuals come in Monday.

The Twilight sequel’s vampires and werewolves shattered the All-Time 3rd Biggest Opening…

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran will begin large-scale air defense war games Sunday aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, a senior military commander said Saturday, reflecting the country’s concern that Israel could make good on threats to strike militarily.

The drill comes as a top clerical official renewed his threat to target “the heart of Tel Aviv” should Israel attack Iran.

Nov. 21 (Bloomberg) — Higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for more troops sent to Afghanistan and NATO should provide half of the new soldiers, said Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000″ a year, could fund more troops, Levin, a Michigan Democrat,

said in an interview for Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are added.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Germany’s new finance minister has echoed Chinese warnings about the growing threat of fresh global asset price bubbles, fuelled by low US interest rates and a weak dollar.

Wolfgang Schäuble’s comments highlight official concern in Europe that the risk of further financial market turbulence has been exacerbated by the exceptional steps taken by central banks and governments to combat the crisis.

Last weekend, Liu Mingkang, China’s banking regulator, criticised the US Federal Reserve for fuelling the “dollar carry-trade”, in which investors borrow dollars at ultra-low interest rates and invest in higher-yielding assets abroad.

Speaking at a banking conference in Frankfurt on Friday, Mr Schäuble said it would be “naive” to assume the next asset price bubble would take the same guise as the last.

He said: “More likely today is a scenario in which excess liquidity globally creates a new [sort of] asset market bubble.”

A horseshoe for a full-grown Clydesdale measures more that 22 inches from end to end and weighs about five pounds. It is more than two times as long and four times as heavy as a shoe worn by a riding horse.

The economy is so bad that I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail. The economy is so bad I ordered a burger at McDonalds and the kid behind the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?” The economy is so bad that CEO’s are now playing miniature golf. The economy is so bad if the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them. The economy is so bad Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM. The economy is so bad McDonalds is selling the 1/4 ouncer. The economy is so bad parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names. The economy is so bad a truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico .

The economy is so bad Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore. The economy is so bad Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen

“I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not a fool, which is a matter of no small difficulty.”

James A. Garfield (1831-1881) 20th US President

The liberals are asking us to give Obama time. We agree and think 25 to life would be appropriate.

Hey, I’m a tried, blue republican but find myself in a dilemma. News letter quote:

“It is vitally important to “translate learning” accomplished in Iraq on issues such as stabilization, nation building and democratization, for example, to existing civilian and military missions in Afghanistan.”

-Karin von Hippel, Co-director, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl: What does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for health care reform?

Here’s a case study.

On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing what could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.

THE INDEPENDENT: People suffering from a form of incurable blindness could soon become the first patients in the world to benefit from a new and controversial transplant operation using stem cells derived from spare human embryos left over from IVF treatment.

Scientists working for an American biotechnology company yesterday applied for a license to carry out a clinical trial on patients in the US suffering from a type of macular degeneration, which causes gradual loss of vision. They expect the transplant operations to begin early in the New Year.

The development is highly controversial because many “pro-life” groups are opposed to using human embryos in any kind of medical research but scientists believe that the benefits could revolutionize the treatment of many incurable disorders ranging from Parkinson’s to heart disease.

WASHINGTON POST: Scientists in Norway announced Friday they had detected a mutated form of the swine flu virus in two patients who died of the flu and a third who was severely ill, the most recent report of mutations in the virus that are being watched closely for any change that could make it more dangerous.

In a statement, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said the mutation “could possibly make the virus more prone to infect deeper in the airways and thus cause more severe disease,” such as pneumonia.

The institute said there was no indication that the mutation would hinder the ability of the vaccine to protect people from becoming infected or impair the effectiveness of antiviral drugs in treating people who became infected.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The U.S. Army will allow the media limited coverage of Sarah Palin’s appearance at Fort Bragg, but will bar reporters from interviewing her or her supporters on the post, officials said Thursday.

A Fort Bragg spokesman initially said the Army would ban the media from Palin’s book signing next week, fearing it would turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama. After The Associated Press and The Fayetteville Observer protested, Col. Billy Buckner said the post would permit restricted access.

A small pool of reporters will be allowed to view and document the event but will be barred from the interviews. The public will be allowed.

THE HILL: ACORN and its affiliates received $200,000 in Justice Department grants between 2002 and 2009, according to a report issued Friday by the department’s inspector general.

No DOJ grants went directly to ACORN, but a handful of grants were awarded either to ACORN affiliates or to other organizations that sub-contracted projects to ACORN.

The report, requested by House Judiciary Committee ranking member Lamar Smith (R-Texas), also found a few instances of ACORN mismanagement of federally contracted work.

POLITICO: Sen. Joe Lieberman’s threat to filibuster any health care bill with a public option could kill health reform this year — and embolden Democratic challengers who’d like to send him packing in 2012.

But Lieberman doesn’t seem worried.

“I don’t think about that stuff,” Lieberman told POLITICO this week. “I’m just — I’m being a legislator. After what I went through in 2006, there’s nothing much more that anybody [who] disagrees with me can try to do.”

Lieberman left the Democratic Party in 2006 after liberal Ned Lamont beat him in Connecticut’s Democratic Senate primary. Lieberman defeated Lamont in the general election and returned to Washington as an independent, where he continues to caucus with Democrats — even though he accuses them of engaging in a bit of bait and switch when it comes to the public option.

United States Army Major Nidal Hasan told a radical cleric considered by authorities to be an al-Qaeda recruiter, “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife, according to an American official with top secret access to 18 e-mails exchanged between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al Awlaki, over a six month period between Dec. 2008 and June 2009.

“It sounds like code words,” said Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a military analyst at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. “That he’s actually either offering himself up or that he’s already crossed that line in his own mind.”

Federal investigators have found that Hasan donated $20,000 to $30,000 a year to overseas Islamic “charities.” As an Army major, his yearly salary, including housing and food allowances, was approximately $92,000. A number of Islamic charities have been identified by U.S. authorities as conduits to terror groups.

Two FBI task forces, in Washington and San Diego, received the intercepted messages, but deemed them innocent.

The American-born Awlaki is considered a recruiter for al-Qaeda. He has been in hiding since the shooting, but a Yemeni journalist told ABC News today that the e-mails show Hasan was “almost a member of al-Qaeda.”

“It is vitally important to “translate learning” accomplished in Iraq on issues such as stabilization, nation building and democratization, for example, to existing civilian and military missions in Afghanistan.”

-Karin von Hippel, Co-director, Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies

WTOP: WASHINGTON - The International Atomic Energy Agency and Syria are walking a tightrope and appear to be headed toward a collision over two nuclear sites where undeclared uranium was recently found.

“Syria has a record of concealing nuclear activities. The whole world saw that with the al-Kibar reactor, an undeclared facility, destroyed in 2007.”

Considering Syria’s close relationship with Iran, which has refused to bend to international will to stop its nuclear weapons production activities, there is concern Syria is following the same path.

POLITICO: The White House’s forthcoming state dinner with the Prime Minister of India is expected to be larger than those of President Barack Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. But another upcoming White House event will be smaller than in years past: The White House’s annual Hanukkah party.

The guest list is expected to be shrunk by more than half, according to the Jerusalem Post. “Though several Jewish leaders expressed understanding for the economic and other reasons behind the cut, they acknowledged that it would likely help feed feelings in some quarters of the American Jewish community that the White House is giving them the cold shoulder.” (Ya think?)

” Our regulatory standards now are based on the outdated assumption that when you test a chemical’s safety at high doses, the results also will reveal any risks occurring at low doses, but as hundreds of studies have now demonstrated, it doesn’t work that way with estrogen-mimicking chemicals like BPA, which can have completely different

and potentially more harmful effects at low doses,” says Frederick Vom Saal, a professor of developmental biology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and a leading researcher on BPA.

BY Nouriel Roubini

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. …

The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost.

This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries.

NEW DELHI, Nov 16 (Reuters) - India has put its nuclear power plants under alert and tightened security around them after intelligence about possible attacks, a report said on Monday. The step comes after a man arrested in the United States on charges of plotting attacks in India was found to have travelled to Indian states that have nuclear installations.

The CMS report is a blow to the White House and House Democrats who have vowed that healthcare reform would curb the growth of healthcare spending. CMS’s analysis is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the cost estimate conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation because CMS did not review tax provisions, which help offset the price tag of the Democrats’ measure.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) highlighted the report on Saturday in a written statement. “This report once again discredits Democrats’ assertions that their $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care will lower costs, and it confirms that this bill violates President Obama’s promise to ‘bend the cost curve.’ It’s now beyond dispute that their bill will raise costs, which is exactly what the American people don’t want.”… According to the 31-page report prepared by Chief CMS Actuary Richard Foster, the House-passed bill would increase costs, cut Medicare and expand Medicaid.

” Our regulatory standards now are based on the outdated assumption that when you test a chemical’s safety at high doses, the results also will reveal any risks occurring at low doses, but as hundreds of studies have now demonstrated, it doesn’t work that way with estrogen-mimicking chemicals like BPA, which can have completely different

and potentially more harmful effects at low doses,” says Frederick Vom Saal, a professor of developmental biology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, and a leading researcher on BPA.

BY Nouriel Roubini

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.

While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession. …

The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost.

This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries.

NEW DELHI, Nov 16 (Reuters) - India has put its nuclear power plants under alert and tightened security around them after intelligence about possible attacks, a report said on Monday. The step comes after a man arrested in the United States on charges of plotting attacks in India was found to have travelled to Indian states that have nuclear installations.

The CMS report is a blow to the White House and House Democrats who have vowed that healthcare reform would curb the growth of healthcare spending. CMS’s analysis is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the cost estimate conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation because CMS did not review tax provisions, which help offset the price tag of the Democrats’ measure.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) highlighted the report on Saturday in a written statement. “This report once again discredits Democrats’ assertions that their $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care will lower costs, and it confirms that this bill violates President Obama’s promise to ‘bend the cost curve.’ It’s now beyond dispute that their bill will raise costs, which is exactly what the American people don’t want.”… According to the 31-page report prepared by Chief CMS Actuary Richard Foster, the House-passed bill would increase costs, cut Medicare and expand Medicaid.

Definition for new readers: Yellow rat democrats, as opposed to Blue Dog Democrats, or just Democrats, are so named because they behave like yellow rats; they are sneaky, they have no rules that they live by except to get what they want by any means necessary and they run for cover when someone shines a light on them. Yellow Rat Democrats draw primarily from the so-called “progressive” democrats.

The normal font indicates hard news articles. The Font in black italics indicates my paraphrasing hard news articles or my general writing, such as in the observations. The font in red italics is the (sometimes snarky) opinion of the author. The font in red bold italics is mad or making a point!

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