ExConservative - The GOP Left Me!

Calling Galatic Storms To Earth - Take the TeaBaggers, please.

 

 

What a way to start the new year:  TeaBaggers again!

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Isn’t it enough that the Party Of No has pretty much changed the electrical charge of our world from positive to negative?  Now they and their vile splinter group are back furthering the cause of negativity.  Is it wrong to wish that somehow a galactic whirlwind would strike the earth and take away Sen. DeMint, that twisted woman from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, zap to some other world the likes of Dick Cheney, and as if by some miracle, take the TeaBaggers to a planet far, far away where they can protest for eternity of things they have not nearly enough brains to understand???????

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I took some time away from my regular life and blogging and I come back and the Republicskum and their fecal-matter-for-brains bull$hit continues!  Imagine that, what a surprise that Christmas made them even more skanky, smelly, rotten, hateful and ugly.  I guess that Jesus saved positive things and thoughts for the good boys and girls, rather than the fools who so twist and rape his life and message for their own evil causes. 

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I’m going to take a deep breath and picture that galactic storm readying the cleansing of Earth.

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Cliff – The XCon

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New Mexican Tea Partiers Bring Guns To Anti-Obama Rally

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A group of tea partiers and Second Amendment activists in New Mexico decided to kick off the new decade with a show of arms at a demonstration protesting President Obama's "socialist" policies, according to local media reports via Think Progress.

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Over three hundred people attended the protest in Alamogordo in southern New Mexico, which was organized by the Otero Tea Party Patriots and a group called the Second Amendment Task Force.

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The Alamogordo Daily News got a picture of one man with a rifle and a sign that says, "No To Obama Care / No To Congess (sic) Spending / No To Stimulus / Replace Comunist (sic) in DC".

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The AP reports that there were "plenty of handguns and rifles displayed ... but no violence."

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CLICK HERE for more!

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The Jewish Kennedys

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Think the Emanuel brothers—Rahm, Ari, and Zeke—are power players? Wait till you meet their ambitious, ridiculously precocious kids. Rebecca Dana on the political dynasty’s next generation.

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This spring, the next great American dynasty will take a spiritual vacation. No, the Kennedys aren’t off to Hyannis Port. The Bushes aren’t whacking brush somewhere in Central Texas. The Roosevelts aren’t in Oyster Bay.

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The Emanuel boys are heading to Israel.

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Ari and Rahm Emanuel are returning to the land of their forefathers—and their actual father, Benjamin—to celebrate the bar mitzvahs of their eldest sons, Noah and Zach. That’s two more Emanuel men coming of age. And if you think the current generation is insufferably driven and accomplished (all three, including older brother Zeke, being titans in Hollywood, government, and medicine), just wait till you see the mensches in the wings.

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CLICK HERE for more!

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January 3: Top 8 Moments From Sunday Talk

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Obama's counterterrorism adviser suggests Dick Cheney is "ignorant," Brit Hume helps Tiger Woods find God, and Howard Kurtz blasts Brian Williams. That and more in our weekly roundup.

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Brit Hume Helps Tiger Woods Find God

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It was just supposed to be a light segment of 2010 predictions by the Fox News Sunday roundtable, but Brit Hume managed to take his prognostication a bit too far. The Fox commentator says there’s still hope for scandal-ridden golfer Tiger Woods—he just has to drop that whole Buddhist thing and go Christian to find forgiveness

 

 

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Former Bush officials avoid publicly supporting

Obama’s policies out of fear of ‘Cheney’s circle.’

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Reporter Peter Baker has a New York Times Magazine piece out today about “Obama’s War on Terrorism.” Matt Yglesias flags an interesting passage from the article revealing the cowardice of former Bush administration officials:

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CLICK HERE for more!

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PPIP: Banks 'Making A Killing' On

Government Toxic Asset Program

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Remember the Public-Private Investment Program (PPIP)? The Treasury Department unveiled the program in March and intended it as a way to help banks unload hard-to-sell (read: often toxic) mortgage securities. In short, private investors partnered with the government to get bad loans off the banks' books -- and everyone, including taxpayers, was supposed to come out ahead on the proceeds of the asset sales.

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But, as Bloomberg reports this morning, some of the nation's largest banks have actually bought more risky home loans instead of getting them off their balance sheets.

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In other words, the program that was supposed to help banks dispose of these toxic assets instead made those assets so marketable that banks bought more -- which has pushed Wall Street's titans to even greater exposure to the stalled housing market. The banks apparently decided that the government's entry into the mortgage security market was simply a guaranteed money-making opportunity.

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CLICK HERE for more!

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Op-Ed Columnist

That 1937 Feeling

By PAUL KRUGMAN

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Here’s what’s coming in economic news: The next employment report could show the economy adding jobs for the first time in two years. The next G.D.P. report is likely to show solid growth in late 2009. There will be lots of bullish commentary — and the calls we’re already hearing for an end to stimulus, for reversing the steps the government and the Federal Reserve took to prop up the economy, will grow even louder.

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But if those calls are heeded, we’ll be repeating the great mistake of 1937, when the Fed and the Roosevelt administration decided that the Great Depression was over, that it was time for the economy to throw away its crutches. Spending was cut back, monetary policy was tightened — and the economy promptly plunged back into the depths.

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This shouldn’t be happening. Both Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, and Christina Romer, who heads President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, are scholars of the Great Depression. Ms. Romer has warned explicitly against re-enacting the events of 1937. But those who remember the past sometimes repeat it anyway.

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CLICK HERE for more Krugman!

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Quick Fact: Doocy ignores Bush policies to claim Abdulmutallab criminal charges "takes us back to the

days of the Clinton administration"

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On the January 4 edition of Fox & Friends, Steve Doocy claimed that the decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is alleged to have attempted to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight, in civilian court, rather than holding Abdulmutallab as an "enemy combatant," "takes us back to the days of the Clinton administration, when things like this were treated as a law enforcement issue, and not as a national security issue." In fact, the Bush administration also tried and convicted several terrorism suspects in civilian court.

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CLICK HERE for more Fox swill!

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Bush Calls Last Decade ‘Tough Act to Follow'

Former President Looks Back on ‘Greaterest Decade'

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CRAWFORD, TX (The Borowitz Report) - The decade just past was "an awesome one in just about every way" and will be hard to top, according to former President George W. Bush.

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In a new interview with the former president, Mr. Bush reflected on the highlights of what he believes will be known as "The Greaterest Decade."

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Read more from Andy Borowitz by clicking here.

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Op-Ed Columnist

New Year’s Resolutions

By MAUREEN DOWD

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WASHINGTON

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Janet Napolitano and I hadn’t planned to spend New Year’s Eve together.

But there we were on this soggy Thursday, sitting in her office on the outskirts of the city, beside a big, black leather saddle that was a gift from the governor of Sonora, Mexico, when Napolitano was governor of Arizona.

I was working on the last night of the decennium horribile dictu, so I had tried to think of who else might also be burning the midnight oil instead of clinking the midnight bubbly.

The answer was obvious.

The homeland security chief’s terrible week began on Christmas Day when she got a call at her brother’s house in Danville, near San Francisco, telling her about the foiled terrorist attack.

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CLICK HERE for more from Maureen!

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The Geek Freaks

Why Jaron Lanier rants against what the Web has become.

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Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget has one of the more sobering prefaces to be found in recent books. "It's early in the twenty-first century, and that means that these words will mostly be read by nonpersons," it begins. The words will be "minced into anatomized search engine keywords," then "copied millions of times by some algorithm somewhere designed to send an advertisement," and then, in a final insult, "scanned, rehashed, and misrepresented by crowds of quick and sloppy readers." Lanier's conclusion: "Real human eyes will read these words in only a tiny minority of the cases." My conclusion: Is that really such a bad thing?

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Lanier is best known as a pioneer of virtual reality and an early star of Wired magazine. He was the guy with the dreadlocks and the giant V.R. goggles perched on his forehead, the epitome of the hippie-shaman-guru strain in tech culture. In what may have been a high point, Lanier's V.R. glove was used to power the graphics in a Grateful Dead video. Lanier lost his company in the early '90s in a then-legendary flameout, and he has been working in the seams of academia and Silicon Valley ever since. He's the barefoot guy in the conference room, ever creative, childlike.

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CLICK HERE for more!

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'Avatar' Rules Box Office For Third Straight Weekend

James Cameron's sci-fi blockbuster earns over $1 billion worldwide to become the fourth-highest-grossing movie of all time.

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Box-Office Top Five

#1 "Avatar" ($68.3 million)

#2 "Sherlock Holmes" ($38.4 million)

#3 "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" ($36.6 million)

#4 "It's Complicated" ($18.7 million)

#5 "The Blind Side" ($12.7 million)

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The third time isn't just the charm for "Avatar" — it marks yet another notch in the science-fiction epic's ever-increasing success story.

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James Cameron's latest film once again topped the box office for its third consecutive weekend with a $68.3 million intake, a mere 9.7 percent drop from last weekend's $75.6 million. "Avatar" now holds the record for highest-grossing second and third weekends for a non-sequel, though that isn't the film's only cause for celebration. To date, "Avatar's" domestic tally is priced at $352.1 million, which combines with foreign numbers for a worldwide total of $1.022 billion.

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CLICK HERE for more, but not in 3-D!

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Op-Ed Guest Columnist

Ten for the Next Ten    

By BONO

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Dublin

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IF we have overindulged in anything these past several days, it is neither holiday ham nor American football; it is Top 10 lists. We have been stuffed full of them. Even in these self-restrained pages, it has been impossible to avoid the end-of-the-decade accountings of the 10 best such-and-suches and the 10 worst fill-in-the-blanks.

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And so, in the spirit of rock star excess, I offer yet another.

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The main difference, if it matters, is that this list looks forward, not backward. So here, then, are 10 ideas that might make the next 10 years more interesting, healthy or civil. Some are trivial, some fundamental. They have little in common with one another except that I am seized by each, and moved by its potential to change our world.

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CLICK HERE for more from Bono!

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Bulletin!  Bulletin!  We’ve received an urgent request for some humor.  Please prepare for a visual and mental orgasm of same.  The Gallery is now OPEN.

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Before the Internet, before the noise, 1200 baud and happy?

 

A friend asked me the other day “Where do you find all this stuff?”  He meant all the news and views that I post and link to, of course.  I assured him and his wife that it is all out there for all of us, if we just look.  This internet is proving to be a tremendous resource... and for more and more people each day, a horrible source of unwanted dissemination and tawdry gossip.  And we can suppose that lots of illegal and threatening crap flows though the net ‘cause where there is greed and opportunity, crime happens.  (It always has and history proves it!)

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Negatives aside, it is getting harder and harder to remember not having the internet and all the goodies we depend on.  Email, porno, sex, dates, selling stuff, Craigslist, online buying and banking, spell checking, spreadsheets, and information are now part of the fabric of our lives.  For those of us who can remember the advent of the 1200 baud modem and what a wonderful improvement it was (over 300 baud), perhaps we are growing too accustomed to speeds measured in megabytes!  Hard drives that hold gigabytes are so commonplace thanks to the speeds and quantity of information available today.  We’ve come a long, long way since that 10-meg Seagate drive “back in the day.”

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The revolution is on.  We are soldiers and the internet is our battlefield.  We’ve come so far and have so far to go, though the horizon is infinitely distant and may have no end.

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Perhaps we would have no Palin, no Rove, no Beck, no Cheney, no Limblohole, no Bachmann, without the internet and the blogs?  They would exist but be just like a “tree falling in the forest” with no one to see (or hear), thus it would be as though they were never there.

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Imagine the quiet. 

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Cliff – The XCon

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Former Insurance Company Executive: Health Insurers

Stand Between Patients And Their Doctors

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One of the most common right-wing memes used by opponents of health care

reform is that progressive solutions to America's health care problems place

"Washington bureaucrats firmly between you and your doctor." Again and

again, conservatives have deployed this meme to demagogue the health care

debate.

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However, the reality is there already is someone standing between you and

your doctor: health insurance companies. Single mother Ellen Hayden knows

this from experience. After losing her mother at the age of 7 from breast

cancer, Hayden has done everything she can to get regular mammograms.

Following an abnormal mammogram, her doctor recommended that she have an

MRI. After the scan, her insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, refused to pay for

the procedure and is also refusing to pay for a follow-up second MRI her

doctor has suggested...

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Click here to read more!

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Fox's Fuzzy Math: 193 Percent Of The Public Support

Palin, Huckabee, And Romney

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Reporting on the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll last night on Fox

News' local Chicago affiliate, anchor Byron Harlan employed some funny math

in asserting that Sarah Palin is leading the pack for the GOP nomination in

2012:

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HARLAN: It looks as if the rogue route is helping Sarah Palin. Her book tour

has meant new support. A new Opinion Dynamics poll for 2012 shows her on top

when it comes to landing the nomination. Palin is at 70 percent, about a

third higher than this past July. Mike Huckabee stands at 63 percent. Mitt

Romney's 60.

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Those figures add up to 193 percent. An accompanying graphic tried to

squeeze the numbers into one pie chart:

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Click here to read more!

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Fox News Threatens Pink Slips For On-Screen Errors

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After a rash of mistakes and apologies over the past weeks, Fox News has sent a memo to employees announcing a new "zero tolerance" policy for on-screen errors.

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FishBowlDC obtained the memo, sent last Friday, which warns mistakes could lead to written warnings, suspensions and termination.

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"Please know that jobs are on the line here. I can not stress that enough," the memo reads.

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Fox has had three much-noticed errors in the past few weeks. First, Sean Hannity used misleading footage to beef up attendance numbers at a Capitol Hill tea party rally -- an incident that caught the attention of the Daily Show's Jon Stewart, forcing Hannity to apologize on air.

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Then, last week, one of the midday news shows aired footage of an old Sarah Palin campaign rally to show the "crowds" at her current book tour. An anchor apologized a day later, and Fox blamed a "production error."

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Click here to read more on Faux!

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Cheney: Obama Bow 'Very Upsetting'

And 'Fundamentally Harmful'

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview to conservative talk radio host Scott Hennen today, in which he slammed President Obama's "fundamentally harmful" bow to the Japanese Emperor during his trip to Asia.

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In the interview, Cheney says that when the President bows to a foreign leader, "our friends and allies don't expect it and our adversaries perceive it as a sign of weakness."

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"I think it's fundamentally harmful and it shows in my mind that this is a guy, a president, who would bow, for example, who doesn't fully understand or have the same perception of the U.S. role in the world that I think most Americans have," he says.

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Cheney concludes: "What I see in President Obama is somebody who bows before foreign leaders and spends his trips aboard primarily apologizing for U.S. behavior. I find that very upsetting."

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Click here to read more from Evil Dick!

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Palin Fort Bragg Book Signing:

Former Governor Asked Not To Speak

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FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Sarah Palin brought her book-signing tour to North

Carolina's Fort Bragg on Monday as thousands greeted the former Republican

vice presidential candidate in a campaign-like gathering that tested

military rules involving politicians.

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The Department of Defense typically prohibits politicians from using

installations as a platform, so Palin didn't give a speech and simply

thanked soldiers individually. She was allowed to hold the event as a

private citizen who was not campaigning, a Fort Bragg spokesman said.

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Army officials initially feared the book signing might turn political and

negative comments would be directed at President Barack Obama, so they

barred media from attending. The Army later relented and allowed coverage,

and many people who attended voiced their opposition to the commander in

chief.

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Click here (at your own risk) to read more!

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Caster Semenya and the middle sex

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As athletic leaders meet to decide the sex of the South African runner, our

writer reveals that the NHS has pioneered a new approach to the hundreds of

UK babies born each year of unclear sex

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The way we cope with Caster Semenya, the South African athlete of disputed

sex, is to tell ourselves that she is nothing like us, nor anyone we know,

nor anything we are likely to know. She is, in the court of public opinion,

a freak, no matter what the news is from the International Association of

Athletics Federations tomorrow.

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So would it surprise you to know that every other day in Britain a baby is

born looking different enough that doctors cannot instantly tell its sex?

Would it make you feel less safe in your opinions if you knew that for 1 in

4,000 expectant parents a year, there is no answer to that first question:

is it a boy or a girl? That almost certainly someone you know has started

off his or her life like this? That, when you take into account the more

subtle disorders of sexual differentiation, it becomes apparent only at

puberty or later, as is the case for Semenya, and the rate doubles again?

That children with physical problems such as this are one of medicine's

best-kept secrets?

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Click here to read more!

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Op-Ed Columnist

The Pit Bull in the China Shop

By FRANK RICH

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AT last the American right and left have one issue they unequivocally agree

on: You don't actually have to read Sarah Palin's book to have an opinion

about it. Last Sunday Liz Cheney praised "Going Rogue" as "well-written" on

Fox News even though, by her own account, she had sampled only "parts" of

it. On Tuesday, Ana Marie Cox, a correspondent for Air America, belittled

the book in The Washington Post while confessing that she couldn't claim to

have "completely" read it.

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"Going Rogue" will hardly be the first best seller embraced by millions for

talismanic rather than literary ends. And I am not recommending that others

follow my example and slog through its 400-plus pages, especially since its

supposed revelations have been picked through 24/7 for a week. But sometimes

I wonder if anyone has read all of what Palin would call the "dang" thing.

Some of the book's most illuminating tics have been mentioned barely - if at

all - by either its fans or foes. Palin is far and away the most important

brand in American politics after Barack Obama, and attention must be paid.

Those who wishfully think her 15 minutes are up are deluding themselves.

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Click here to read more Frank Rich!

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Op-Ed Columnist

Visceral Has Its Value

By MAUREEN DOWD

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It's easy to dismiss Sarah Palin.

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She's back on the trail, with the tumbling hair and tumbling thoughts. The

queen of the scenic strip mall known as Wasilla now reigns over thrilled

subjects thronging to a politically strategic swath of American strip malls.

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The conservative celebrity clearly hasn't boned up on anything, except her

own endless odyssey of self-discovery. And she still has that Yoda-like

syntax.

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"And I think more of a concern has been not within the campaign the mistakes

that were made, not being able to react to the circumstances that those

mistakes created in a real positive and professional and helpful way for

John McCain," she told Bill O'Reilly.

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Yet Democrats would be foolish to write off her visceral power.

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Click here to read more Mo!

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Op-Ed Columnist

Advice From Grandma

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

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President Obama's visit to China this week inevitably invites comparisons

between the world's two leading powers. You know what they say: Britain

owned the 19th century, America owned the 20th century, and, it's all but

certain that China will own the 21st century. Maybe, but I'm not ready to

cede the 21st century to China just yet.

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Why not? It has to do with the fact that we are moving into a

hyperintegrated world in which all aspects of production - raw materials,

design, manufacturing, distribution, fulfillment, financing and branding -

have become commodities that can be accessed from anywhere by anyone. But

there are still two really important things that can't be commoditized.

Fortunately, America still has one of them: imagination.

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What your citizens imagine now matters more than ever because they can act

on their own imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever

before - as individuals. In such a world, societies that can nurture people

with the ability to imagine and spin off new ideas will thrive. The Apple

iPod may be made in China, but it was dreamed up in America, and that's

where most of the profits go. America - with its open, free, no-limits,

immigrant-friendly society - is still the world's greatest dream machine.

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Who would cede a century in which imagination will have such a high value to

an authoritarian society that controls its Internet and jails political

prisoners? Remember what Grandma used to say: Never cede a century to a

country that censors Google.

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But while our culture of imagination is still vibrant, the other critical

factor that still differentiates countries today - and is not a commodity -

is good governance, which can harness creativity. And that we may be losing.

I am talking about the ability of a society's leaders to think long term,

address their problems with the optimal legislation and attract capable

people into government. What I increasingly fear today is that America is

only able to produce "suboptimal" responses to its biggest problems -

education, debt, financial regulation, health care, energy and environment.

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Click here to read more Friedman!

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Editorial-New York TIMES

Old Soldiers Never Cash Out

Published: November 22, 2009

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For all the stars of ranking generals and admirals in Washington, it turns

out there's still a higher grade - "senior mentor." These are retired brass

enjoying lucrative compensation as part-time Pentagon advisers, who, in most

cases, also draw V.I.P. pay from companies seeking defense contracts. The

mentor cohort has quietly grown in recent years from a handful to at least

158 ranking retired officers - 80 percent of whom hire on at the same time

with defense contractors.

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There is nothing illegal about the double-dipping. But few people in

Congress or elsewhere knew about it until now because there is no

requirement to tell anyone, even the Pentagon. As Pentagon advisers, mentors

are paid hundreds of dollars an hour for offering counsel to former

colleagues on war games and other specialties. As defense contract

consultants, they can make considerably more. It's time to closely manage

the retirees' good deal, documented in a report by USA Today.

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Defense specialists in the Senate are proposing that ethics rules be written

at least to mandate financial disclosure to avoid conflicts of interest.

More than that may be needed. The Air Force has just directed that financial

statements be required from mentors who might "potentially influence

procurement decisions."

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Click here to read the rest of the Editorial!

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Report: Religion-Based Hate Crimes

Highest Since 2001

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WASHINGTON (RNS) Hate crime incidents targeting people based on their

religion were at their highest frequency last year since 2001, according to

a new report.

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The report, compiled by the Anti-Defamation League from FBI data, found

1,519 religious hate crimes in 2008, accounting for about 20 percent of all

bias crimes. It was an increase from 2007, when 1,400 crimes of religious

bias were reported.

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The number of crimes targeting Jews or Jewish institutions also increased in

2008. There were 1,013 hate crimes against Jews last year, accounting for

about two-thirds of all religious bias crimes. It was the largest number of

crimes against Jews since 2001.

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Click here to read more!

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America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers, calls out Mormons and schools all Americans on the unconstitutional craze of doling out civil rights by popular vote.  

 

 

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Robots are already being used for a variety of reasons to make our lives more comfortable, but can they ever be more than just friends? Mo Rocca finds out.

 

 

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Welcome One And All To The Gallery!

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No animals are harmed in this space.

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Life And Death - We face them daily.

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The picture is stark.  It makes no noise, doesn’t move, and has no hi-tech graphics, but it screams thousands of messages, tells uncountable stories, and must be shown.

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When any of us falls, on distant shores or somewhere in the homeland, a part of each of us falls as well.  These ones are our brothers and sisters, from another time or not, from another mother and father, perhaps, but they have the DNA that all patriotic, caring Americans share:  we love our country.  So we feel the pain of those who have lost loved ones and gather at a place like happened yesterday, where the Commander In Chief steps up and tries to comfort those who have been left behind, as well as all of us who feel lessened by the unwarranted deaths.

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This President stepped up and wrapped his arms around all of us.  Words don’t fix everything, but they sure do help.  He was obviously close to tears and that endears him to those of us who understand loss and pain and the lack of logic in such a horrible tragedy.  I’m grateful that we have someone so composed and yet so understanding.

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Of course there is discussion of death going on, what with two wars, this Ft. Hood massacre, and the death penalty being used on the D.C. Sniper.  Just remember that there is also a lot of life, a lot of possibilities, and yes, there still is hope.  Don’t fail to embrace it, and if you are like me, you try to understand that even the haters, the killers, the rabid religious zealots, serve at least to make us appreciate LIFE, LOVE, and the BEAUTY that we can find if we only look.  Cherish a child’s laughter, enjoy a sporting event, go bowling, work in the garden, appreciate the joy of a morning shower, a great dinner with family or friends, and just LIVE.

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Cliff the XCon

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Obama honors veterans at Arlington cemetery

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ARLINGTON, Va. – President Barack Obama went to the national burial ground for war heros to place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, a day after leading a memorial service for those slain in the Fort Hood shootings.

On a gray, rainy day, Obama took part in a tradition honoring not only those who lost their lives in battle but also the men and women who serve U.S. military missions worldwide today.

Wearing a black raincoat, the president place a flower-laced wreath on a stand and stood over it silently for several moments. He placed his hand on his heart as a bugler played taps.

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Click here to read more.

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Rep. Bart Stupak's legislation infuriated Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who considered it a betrayal to the party.

 AP Photo Composite

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'No easy way out' for Dems on abortion

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The sudden spasm of intense debate over abortion on Capitol Hill this week threatens not only to stall the passage of health care legislation, but also to shatter the delicate cease-fire that has governed the abortion issue during the Obama era.

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After months of dodging high-profile confrontations over abortion, Democrats — including President Barack Obama — find themselves faced with a stark set of alternatives: Support a bill that imposes limits on access to abortion or demand one that might, however indirectly, fund the procedure with taxpayer money.

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It's the kind of decision point the White House and Democratic leaders have consistently attempted to avoid. By playing down divisions over abortion and emphasizing shared goals — such as reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in the United States — members of the president's party have sought to blur the lines of one of the country's most furious and enduring debates.

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Click here to read more.

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A guard checks cells on California's death row at San Quentin State Prison. The condemned live in single cells

that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security confines elsewhere, they have better access to

telephones and they have 'contact visits' in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as

in other institutions. (Los Angeles Times / October 25, 2004)

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Death penalty is considered a boon by some California inmates

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Given the state moratorium on executions and an appeals process that can last for decades, inmates can expect to live a long time, and with privileges other prisoners lack.

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White supremacist gang hit man Billy Joe Johnson got what he asked for from the Orange County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last month: a death sentence.

It wasn't remorse for his crimes or a desire for atonement that drove him to ask for execution; it was the expectation that conditions on death row would be more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons and that any date with the executioner would be decades away if it came at all.

Although executions are carried out with comparative speed in states such as Virginia, where Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death Tuesday night, capital punishment in California has become so bogged down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat, say experts on both sides of the issue.

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Study: High BPA Linked to Sex Problems in Men

Men Exposed to High Levels of the Chemical Reported

Erection Problems, Lower Sex Drive

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Nov. 11, 2009 -- Workers exposed to very high levels of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) were four to seven times more likely to report sexual function problems as were workers with no occupational exposure to the chemical, a new study shows.

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Earlier research has linked BPA exposure to reproduction problems in animals, but the five-year study is the first to do so in humans.

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Researchers with Kaiser Permanente compared self-reported sexual function scores among male factory workers in China who were and were not exposed to BPA on the job.

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BPA levels among the occupationally exposed men were about 50 times higher than average levels among American men and Chinese men with no occupational exposure to the chemical, the researchers say.

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Breaking up...now not so hard to do

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If you're a douchebag and you wanna break up with your douchey lover, you can now do it via the Internet with iDump4U.com. (Don't worry—this has nothing to do with scat.)

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Click on iDump4U.com and you'll see that the site's premise (and purpose) is shockingly simple:

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"Are you cheating on someone, are you bored with someone, or maybe you just want to get out and can't find the words? Welcome to a new way to pass responsibility on to someone else! Now you can actually have us dump your boyfriend/girlfriend and take the guilt off of you."

Here's how iDump4U.com works: there is a $10 "Basic Breakup" where this dude Bradley Laborman calls your lover, breaks up with them for you, and puts the whole mess on Youtube (Nate's break up with partyboy Ben for issues involving "back hair" and "letting himself go," heard above, is just the tip of the iceberg...you really must listen to all of these.)

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Stewart mocks Hannity for inflating Bachmann rally attendance, trying to pass 9-12 rally footage off as Bachmann rally footage

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From the November 10 edition of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

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Great Sites!

www.hinessight.com

www.news.yahoo.com

www.thedailybeast.com

 

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Mixed Messages

Can you decode them?

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Mixed Messages:  The End

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Wall Street Greed Continues - With Flu Vaccines?

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Isn’t it enough that the barons of Wall Street screwed the country, the citizens, the government, and pretty much raped the economy?  Greed begat greed that begat greater greed until the game of smoke and mirrors, slight of hand, and outright lying and fabrication of numbers collapsed and we have suffered and still suffer from their criminality.

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Now I hear that the Wall Street barons got “cuttzies” for flu vaccine!  Why and how can they get the stuff sooner than those most at risk?  What gives them the right to move to the front of the line?  Have they not stolen enough, devastated enough lives, evaporated enough businesses?

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Thinking it through, it screams to me:  Big Pharma is Big Business and Big Business is Wall Street.  Wall Street and the drug companies have their heads up each other’s asses.  They are attached at the lips and rectum and are like parasites on each other first, then they devour our money as desert.

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Pigs.  Unthinking, void of souls, they take and take, then go for the kill.  Meanwhile, the Congress rolls over and shouts, “Do me!  Do me next!”  And they do, but in some cases I suspect it is incest due to the countless merged bloodlines.

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The only way they should get the shots now is if each building gets ONE NEEDLE and one needle only and they have to share it.  What’s the harm?  They already have shared every possible fluid.

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F**k them, the f**kin’ f**ks.

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XCon

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Wall St swine flu vaccinations spark uproar

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News that US swine flu vaccines, meant to be prioritized for the nation's most vulnerable, are being distributed to Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs sparked uproar Thursday.

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The New York Department of Health said Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have applied for supplies of the H1N1 vaccine and are eligible because they are large employers with in-house clinics.

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With H1N1 vaccines often scarce and populist anger already raging at Wall Street for last year's financial meltdown, the news triggered furor.

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Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer for the largest US health care union, the SEIU, said it was "obscene" that powerful and wealthy private organizations got vaccines when "at-risk Americans are either waiting in line for hours or getting turned away.

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Coburn places hold on veterans benefits bill.

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One of the Senate’s most vociferous opponents of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has been Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who called the stimulus “the worst act of generational theft in our nation’s history.” Today, The Marine Corp Times revealed exactly how far Coburn was willing to go to undermine ARRA. It turns out Coburn has been the senator who has placed holds on several veterans benefits bills because he wanted to divert money from unspent ARRA funds on them:

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Thirteen major military and veterans groups have joined forces to try to force one senator — Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — to release a hold that he has placed on a major veterans benefits bill.

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Click Here to read more!

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Inside Scientology's Big Defection

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What led Crash director Paul Haggis to leave the church after 35 years? Kim Masters reports on how Scientology aided his career—and then tried to milk his success.

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Maybe Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige had a premonition. Or maybe he’s not much of a talent spotter.

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But a few years back, Miscavige apparently wasn’t keen on using writer-director Paul Haggis for a series of films based on treatments by the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. This was before Haggis, who made news recently with his angry renunciation of Scientology had back-to-back turns as an Oscar magnet in 2005 and 2006. (Haggis wrote and directed Crash and adapted the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby. Both won Best Picture.)

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“I was told he was not to be approached because he was a crappy TV writer who did Facts of Life and Diff’rent Strokes,” Headley recalls.

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Marc Headley worked in Scientology’s film-production studio from 1989 until 2005, when part of the mission was to come up with scripts for movies intended to introduce newcomers—“raw meat,” in church parlance—to the teachings of Scientology. Headley says his instructions were not to pursue Haggis as a writer.

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Jobless rate tops 10% for first time since 1983

Employers cut 190,000 jobs in October. Analysts expect

unemployment to stay high well into next year.

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Reporting from Washington — The nation's unemployment rate surged to 10.2% in October, reaching double digits for the first time in 26 years, the Labor Department reported today.

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The unexpected sharp increase, from 9.8% in September, came as employers dropped 190,000 workers from their payrolls last month. That was larger than the 175,000 job losses that most forecasters were expecting for the month, and it underscored just how dire the labor market remains despite the recent upturn in the nation's economic output.

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Unemployment had been steadily rising in recent months, but the double-digit figure is likely to have a major psychological effect as well as potentially significant consequences in Washington.

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READ MORE - Click Here.

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15 Cars Fueling the Auto Recovery

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As comebacks go, it's an awfully weak one. Annual car sales in 2009 are likely to end up at the lowest level in years, down more than 40 percent from their peak in 2005. The worst months came in the spring, punctuated by the bankruptcy filings of General Motors and Chrysler. The cash-for-clunkers program provided a nice summer boost, but that was followed by a steep dropoff once the giveaway ended and doubts that the subsidies would lead to any net gain at all.

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Click Here to read more!

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The 12 Most Offensive Signs From Bachmann's Tea Party

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Click Here to read more!

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Michele Bachmann's

army marches on Washington

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The Tea Party crowd descends on the Capitol to fight socialism, healthcare and President Obama

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WASHINGTON -- Most of the time, the halls of the Cannon House Office Building are pretty sedate. Every now and then, the soles of a pair of expensive loafers clack on the marble, and echo down the corridor; sometimes an eager intern, leading a tour group, breaks the silence with a few choice facts about American history. If there's a vote, bells ring, and lawmakers scurry to the Capitol building. But otherwise, not much is going on in the middle of a Thursday afternoon -- particularly since Congress likes to call it a week around then, anyway.

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Unless, of course, you're talking about the Thursday when Rep. Michele Bachmann has summoned a horde of frenzied Tea Partiers to Washington for what she had called, on a preview conference call for conservative bloggers the night before, "the Super Bowl of our freedom."

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Click Here to read more!

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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Indecision 2009 - Local Election Results
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

 

 

Jon Stewart:

Election losers do their best to ‘polish that turd’

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Following Tuesday's elections, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart focused on the efforts of the losers to "polish that turd" by portraying themselves as having won no matter what the outcome.

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Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine insisted that even though incumbent New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine lost to his Republican challenger, he "was down by 15 points essentially in the middle of the summer and came within an eyelash of winning that all back."

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"He lost by four percent," Stewart commented. "Those are some thick fucking eyelashes."

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Click Here to read more!

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Stewart parodies Beck's paranoid

conspiracy charts, Nazi rhetoric

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READ MORE - Click Here.

 

 

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The Oscar for 'Slumdog Millionaire,' which was one-third in Hindi,

with a Muslim hero, was just one omen that the kudos world was changing.

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Awards season has officially arrived

2009-10 looking like unpredictable year in Hollywood

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The dates are set for a flood of screenings, cocktail receptions and Q&A sessions, with plenty more to come. This means only one thing: Awards season is here!

So it's time for our second annual series of awards columns, in which we will wander through the kudos world like a Tinseltown Margaret Mead, observing the strange rituals of the natives.

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I've always liked awards because they are like time capsules, offering clues about the tastes and priorities of each era. As such, the 2009-10 season should be one of the craziest and most unpredictable in memory -- because this has been a year of massive changes.

In the past six months, four of the majors have seen top-level exec shifts, reflecting the turbulence as everything changes: the backing (so long, hedge funds!), the salaries (au revoir, first-dollar gross!) and the marketing (auf wiedersehen, ad buys in consumer newspapers!).

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READ MORE - Click Here.

 

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Which Websites and Blogs Improve Your Happiness?

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On the Inspiration Board of the Happiness Project Toolbox, people have posted a staggeringly interesting array of happiness-related quotations, images, book suggestions, and Web site recommendations.

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It seems like a good idea to create a place here where people can shine a spotlight on happiness-boosting blogs and Web sites—so I'm making a chart. List your favorite here. And don't feel shy about adding yourself to the chart.

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Click Here to read more!

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