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  Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner
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    Source: Programs Recently Aired - C-SPAN Video Library
    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:38
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    Alfred E. Smith Memorial FoundationWhite House Travel | Domestic Trip
    President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave keynote speeches at the 67th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City.'‚The fundraiser, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, is a .. Read MorePresident Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave keynote speeches at the 67th Annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City.'‚The fundraiser, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, is a traditional light-hearted joint appearance for presidential candidates.'‚Founded in 1946 by Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Foundation honors the memory of Alfred E. Smith who died in in 1944. Smith was a four-time governor of the state of New York and former presidential candidate.
    45 minutes | 185 Views
  Zingers fly at Alfred Smith Dinner; Obama supporters not amused by Romney's humor
    Link to Article
    Source: Twitchy » US Politics
    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:38
    President Obama and Mitt Romney traded jokes tonight at the white-tie Alfred Smith Dinner in New York City, held by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York to raise money for needy children. The media let us know before the first presidential debate that there would be no ''zingers'' in Denver, but the barbs were flying tonight.
    Obama was first to speak and took a good number of shots at himself.
    Romney, again proving not to be the emotionless straw man we've been sold by the media, had plenty of zingers of his own.
    See for yourself:
    Reporters on the scene seemed genuinely pleased to see humor interjected into what has been a contentious race, but the president's fans were not amused by what they saw as mean-spirited jibes.
    Tough crowd. Anyone have a theory why?
    Could we please have an entertainment professional weigh in?
  North Korea Warns South Of A Merciless Military Strike If Anticommunist Message Sent Across Border
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    Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:01
  Kofi Annan's New Book "Interventions" (And TEAM AMERICA!)
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    Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:36
  Is The Federal Reserve Funding US Wars?
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    Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:33
  "Congress Insider Trades! Congress Cheats! Congress Doesn't Pay Taxes! And No One Says ANYTHING!"
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    Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:02
  CNN: Is Al Qaeda In Decline Or Getting Stronger?
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:33
  Largest Joint Missile Defense Exercise In The History Of US Israel Alliance
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:32
  MITT ROMNEY COMEDY GOLD!
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:31
  "Mr President & Governor Romney Do You Know What The Holy Father Asked Me To Tell You...?"
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:29
  President Obama "Sometimes It Feels Like This Race Has Dragged On Forever..."
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:29
  Lawrence O'Donnell Challenges Romney's Son Tagg To A FIGHT! "Any Time! Any Where!"
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:28
  Will A Bullet Tax Curb Crime?
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    Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:28
  US "Contractors" Or "Mercenaries" Caught Acting Like Out Of Control Drunk Frat Boys AGAIN!
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    Source: Uploads by MOXNEWSd0tC0M
    Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:34
Obama Lite
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:33
  My children, why have the elites been so concerned about sugar?
  They have been lying to you for years in telling you it is bad.
  I can inform you that from the first propaganda concerning food as eggs and meat, in favor of vegetarian diets, that the intent was to reduce the American people to vassal status by changing their diet, as the robust meat diet of Americans, created a healthy and aggressive race, which was not possible to be managed.
  I told you that the feeding of soy formula to infants created effeminate boys. The result is the American fag which is a walking idiotic penis.
  What people eat is indeed what they are and become as was proven here in the amino acids food break down to, join with the amino acids of the body to form cells, and one becomes either this frankenfood monster the cartels have created or they become healthy moral people.
  That is what is behind Muchelle Obama's fag food diet on American children. But ask yourself what is behind the Semonyx dead baby flavor which Pepsi is making the choice a new aborted children everywhere in there HEK testing which turns kindney cells in frankenstein labratories into tongue cells lapping at sugars or more correctly "newly derived" sweeteners.
  I will inform you just like Scytl voting machines only voting in leftists worldwide, it is no accident that an unknown company like Semonyx suddenly appears like all those cartel funded "green companies" to start registering patents in this new HEK 293 aborted child cell food tasting.
  How does one figure out magically after almost 40 years to suddenly transform this DNA from medical testing cells into baby tongue cells lapping at the food industry concerning sugar?This Semonyx has patents upon patents for this stuff and just appeared out of nowhere. That all points to some NAZI or Obama state run frankenlabs introducing bio technology that no one in their right mind would ever conceive.
  Seriously would it ever occur to you take an old Netherland baby almost 4 decades dead, whose kidney cells were cannibalized, and suddenly turn them into baby tongue cells to taste test your Pepsi or Frito Lay?
  There is more to this and this blog exclusively posts here the reasoning behind this all.
  The first in this, is sugar is not a poison to the human body. Sugar is natural and it is what the human body converts foods into. Sugar in all cases is a natural anticeptic and it does cure the body. If the cartels tried to get you to eat corn syrup and you rejected it, then it means that sugar was protecting your bodies from something they were engaged in, in these DNA tests all there vaccines and frankencrops are creating in diseases.
  So we move for this in sugar is healthy, grown by farmers who are making money in the Americas, who are then competitors to the cartels feudal control. Part two is another way to destroy farmers ability to make a living off the land and boot them off the land as was the case in the 1970's in America and that sham "Brazilian rain forests" were being cut down, as this was not about disease infested jungles, but about Brazilian farmers becoming wealthy capitalists and not communists.
  As this comes to the third part, you know in patterns that these cartel lords do not do anything, unless they already have the profits and outcome decided. Whatever this "derived sweetener" is, that this aborted baby tongue is licking on, it is already in existence and too toxic for the industries to give to people. So it is being refined under the dead baby taste test.This projects out that dead babies are being funded to test the effects of what this "DS" is having on cell structure already mutated. In short, this Pepsi Semonyx "frankensweetener" is something which targets the amino acid building blocks of the human body, the same way Monsanto genetically modified crops accomplish.This DS is designed to changed human DNA structures for the purposes of what all of this cancer testing by vaccines to the frankenfood DNA shifting in the human body to what is now being staged next with full Obama regime mandates, as this is where this all orignates out of is the Obama regime, for their benefactors who have been behind the destruction of the American race.
  Europe will not allow these poisons in. Yet this is what the American genocide experiment has been pushing with full Dr. Frankenstein support.
  One just has to look at the list from Pepsi, Hershey to the other companies contracting for this to find the road map in which companies are part of this Obama Nazi run organism with full designs on this DNA manipulation.
  Just think, that soda used to be 10 cents a bottle. Now it is from 40 to a dollar a can. Everyone has been deflected from remembering that SUGAR was around 1.49 for a 5 pound bag when Obama took office, and over night it went to 2.69. Yes you look at gasoline at 1.87 under Bush43 and Obama at 4.00, and you know the price was fixed for Obama green program takeover, but why is it no one but this blog has been exclusively exposing the price of sugar?
  Sugar is what this global order has fixated upon for reasons that are genetic. They can tell you sugar rots your teeth, but then if you examine your toothpaste it is FULL OF SUGAR. The propaganda does not match the reality of what this group has been up to.
  The elite of this world, have in election theft, energy and food, engaged in the process of overthrowing the world. This Semonyx labratory "findings" all points now to something interesting in from the first post this blog imitated in exposing this, it has received mass attention. As is posted here, when this blog then started posting on American genetics, that is what they surveillance spiders grabbed. The interest is in genetics and there is great interest in just what is being exposed here in the reasons behind this attack on sugar.
  Congressmen and Right to Life sites can post on these subjects and it causes no red flags. As soon as this blog starts examining the issues of genetics and the code source in who HEK 293 has been corrupted and what is behind the "DS", then the spiders come alive and are fixated on what secrets this blog will reveal.
  It is beyond human cannibalism. It is the realm of the governmental structures of the socio industrial complex which has GE and Warren Buffett being fed government funds and contracts to "create industry" which the Obama regime benefits from while not paying taxes.Billions of dollars were offered up in grants in the sham of global warming to twit skirts like in Wisconsin studying how the great lakes effected all this, when there was no effect.
  How many billions of dollars in research was behind Semonyx developing this dead baby tongue and where did this research really originate from?
  Just approach some company sometime or groups of companies and governments like Scytl or Semonyx did. You will be ignored and you will be talked down to.Yet when Semonyx knocked, suddenly Pepsi bent over and all these other companies were begging to have this franken company do testing with unproven genetic cells.......
  Let that sink in, and you start to comprehend this was some Manhattan type project in genetics and it came from the global elite and you are the recipients of another guinea pig experiment to murder you.
  Yes we always at Lame Cherry are the popular girl.This is beyond using dead babies from the Netherlands. It is beyond the gross and disgusting. It is beyond the unregulated mutation of human cells, as what protections are in place that this HEK does not transform into some plague cells eating people instead of just tasting Pepsi and Frito Lay.It is about human DNA and the manipulation of it, for the dark matter. It is Biblical in that tattoo of the NeoRoman empire which all will have to take for loyalty oaths to do business of buy food. It comes full circle in that false tree of life that thee mortal immortals have built on the Metatron Cube and are initiating a signature in photon physics, not of White Light or God Light, but dark light.
  This Pepsi Semonyx group have this "sweetener". It is being designed to be rolled out as all of these Obama regulations allow this without any oversight.
  The world is full sugar, from beet to cane, and yet for some reason the prices were jacked up by Obama like gas, and now comes this new Obama sweetener, that they are all keeping under wraps as it is being tested by dead babies.
  Semonyx lies in it's press releases that HEK 293 is not being used. Why is that ?
  Who is the Dr. Germlove who is behind these revolutionary patents, that one would think would bring in Nobel Prize acclimation. Yet it is all silent as this intelligence operation from the feudal lords is the ingredient put into place.
  They have hid the dead babies. They have hid the mutant technology. They have hid the "sweetener" and they have hid where all of this came from.
  This is not Thomas Edison with a big lab with the lights on and Henry Ford turning lights on in America. This is something back engineered and exposing this is making this girl very popular again in what is behind all of this.
  This "sweetener" is going to be defined as OBAMA LITE, as it is a stealth and Birther forged as his heritage. It comes to this moment Tea Party and all Patriots to dust off yourselves in preparation in whatever outcome this election brings to America, and prepare to make this the issue which Congress shuts down for your health sake.
  Either make HEK illegal and these non sugar products, make them red warning labels warning consumers or make them have a 30% industry tax for using them, to protect the sugar farmers in the Americas.It is one thing to use dead babies to con people into accepting it for medical advancements, but a completely different situation to have those children's cells involved in food taste tests for another corporation donating funnel money into the Obama regime.
  This blog exclusively has exposed this is an attack on American farmers. It is an attack on a natural food you are eating for an Obama unnatural poison. It is genetic mutants testing this Obama Lite in this dead baby tongue is liking something which feeds it's mutant tastes.
  Not nuff said
  agtG 230
  The reality in all of this in Americans and people of the west for 300 years have been consuming epic proportions of sugars in their diets, AND THEIR LIFE SPANS HAVE INCREASED BY 30 YEARS IN MOST CASES.
  Sugar has not been a detriment. Sugar in fact has been an energy source to humans in the west.
  It all comes back to why with sugar being cheap before Obama arrived, it is now suddenly something which must be replaced when it has been a benefit.
  Lame Cherry
How the Fiscal Stimulus Helped, and Could Have Done More
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:30
  AS a former member of President Obama's economic team, I have a soft spot for the fiscal stimulus legislation he signed just a month after his inauguration.
  But I'm also an empirical economist who's spent a career trying to estimate the effects of monetary and fiscal policy. So let me put on my empiricist's hat and evaluate what we know about the legislation's effects.
  After listening to Representative Paul Ryan in the vice-presidential debate, you might think that careful evaluation isn't needed. In his view, we spent $800 billion on the stimulus, yet unemployment still rose to 10 percent '-- so obviously it wasn't helpful.
  To understand what's wrong with that reasoning, think of someone who's been in a terrible accident and has massive internal bleeding. After lifesaving surgery, the patient still feels rotten. But we shouldn't conclude from this lingering pain that the surgery was useless '-- because without it, the patient would have died.
  Without knowing where the economy was headed in the absence of the stimulus, it's impossible to judge what it contributed just from what happened afterward. That's why empirical economists rely on other approaches.
  One is to look at history. The stimulus legislation, technically known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was a mixture of tax cuts for families and businesses; increased transfer payments, like unemployment insurance; and increased direct government spending, like infrastructure investment. A growing literature examines the effects of such tax cuts and increases in government spending over history and across countries, and the overwhelming conclusion is that fiscal stimulus raises employment and output in the near term.
  When the Congressional Budget Office or leading private forecasters assess what the Recovery Act contributed, they use these estimates from history. They multiply the amounts of different types of stimulus in the act by their usual historical effects. This method suggests that at its peak, the act raised employment by about 1 million to 3 1/2 million jobs, compared with what would have happened without it.
  But history isn't destiny. It's possible that the various elements of the Recovery Act worked better or worse than similar measures in the past. That's why a cottage industry has emerged of researchers looking explicitly at the recent experience.
  The most successful of these studies focus on the variation in Recovery Act spending across states. Some of this variation resulted from differences in the recession's severity. For example, there was much more spending on unemployment insurance in Michigan than in Wyoming, because unemployment rose much more in Michigan. We wouldn't want to look at that variation and say Recovery Act spending caused unemployment to be higher, because causation clearly ran in the other direction.
  But some Recovery Act spending was allocated via formulas unrelated to economic conditions in particular states. For example, some road-repair expenditures were based on the miles of highways in each state, and some aid to state governments was based on past Medicaid funding. This kind of spending provides a sort of natural experiment: some states received more treatment from the Recovery Act than others for relatively random reasons.
  TWO careful studies have looked at the relationship between this formulaic spending and employment. Both find that states that received more money fared substantially better. This is the strongest direct evidence that the Recovery Act contributed to employment growth. Based on the estimated size of the effect, the studies suggest that the act created more than three million jobs.
  Another study using a related method finds noticeably smaller effects. Even it, however, suggests that about a million jobs were created, and that estimate doesn't include the effects of the act's tax cuts.
  In addition to its near-term jobs effects, the Recovery Act may also be having more lasting benefits. It's too early to measure the value of the roads, bridges and airports improved through stimulus funds. But a survey of influential studies looking at highway construction in the 1950s and '60s suggests that such investments contribute substantially to long-term growth.
  Likewise, the Recovery Act's funding of basic research and clean-energy technology is only just beginning to pay dividends. And, contrary to some claims, the Government Accountability Office has found that those investments were accompanied by almost no fraud and abuse.
  The act may have also helped prevent a permanent rise in unemployment. The longer workers are unemployed, the more likely they will never find steady employment again. By creating millions of jobs for unemployed workers in 2009 and 2010, the Recovery Act may have prevented some of these scarring effects.
  THOUGH the Recovery Act appears to have had many benefits, it could have been more effective.
  Most obviously, it was too small. When we were designing it, most forecasters estimated that the United States would lose around six million jobs during the recession without fiscal stimulus. Compared with this baseline, creating three million jobs would have filled roughly half of the employment hole.
  As it turned out, even with the stimulus, we lost almost nine million jobs. Indeed, because of horrific job losses in late 2008 and early 2009, we'd nearly passed the six-million mark before the Recovery Act was even signed. Adding in the estimated effect of the act, the correct no-stimulus baseline was a total employment fall of nearly 12 million. With a loss that big, creating three million jobs was helpful, but not nearly enough.
  A different mix of spending increases and tax cuts might also have been desirable. The money given to state and local governments to ease their budget problems appears to have been particularly effective for job creation in the near term. On the other hand, many families didn't even realize they had received a tax cut, so that part of the act may have had a smaller impact than was initially projected. And I desperately wish we'd been able to design a public employment program that could have directly hired many unemployed workers, especially young people.
  Finally, there's little question that policy makers '-- myself included '-- should have worked harder to earn the public's support for the act. One frustrating anomaly is that many of its individual components routinely received favorable reactions in polls, while the overall act was viewed negatively.
  That is more than a simple public relations problem. Recovery measures work better when they raise confidence '-- as Franklin D. Roosevelt understood. His fireside chats, and his inaugural address proclaiming he would fight the Great Depression with the same resolve he would muster against a foreign foe, were aimed at reassuring Americans. Recent research suggests that New Deal programs may actually have had their primary impact on the economy by influencing consumer and business expectations of future growth and inflation.
  Partly because of fierce political opposition, and partly because of ineffective communication and imperfect design, the Recovery Act generated little such rebound in confidence. As a result, it didn't have that extra, Rooseveltian kick.
  The ultimate verdict on the Recovery Act will depend in part on further studies. I believe that as more research occurs and the political rancor fades, the fiscal stimulus will be viewed as an important step at a bleak moment in our history. Not the knockout punch the administration had hoped for, but a valuable effort that improved the lives of many.
  Christina D. Romer is an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the chairwoman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
The Adam Carolla Show '' A Free Daily Comedy Podcast from Adam Carolla
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  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:21
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50 Crazy Things That Obama Supporters Are Threatening To Do If Romney Wins.
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  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:21
  Will cities all over America erupt in violence if Mitt Romney wins the election? Right now we are probably witnessing the most divisive campaign in modern U.S. history, and both sides truly hate one another. Even CNN is running articles about how polarized politics in America has become and how vicious both sides can be. There is a lot of anger and frustration out there that has been bottled up for a long time, and this election could end up being a trigger event that releases a lot of it. Both sides are entirely convinced that they can win this tightly contested election, and one side is going to feel bitterly disappointed when it does not happen. Both sides are talking as if it is going to be "the end of America" or "the end of the world" if they lose this election. This is particularly true when it comes to Obama supporters. On social networking sites such as Twitter, many of them have actually been proclaiming that Mitt Romney wants to "exterminate black people" and many of them have been openly threatening to harm him if he does win the election. This is a very dangerous sign, and these threats should be taken very seriously. Of course a lot of Romney supporters are also likely to go absolutely insane if Obama ends up winning. In fact, one Romney supporter apparently put a bullet through the window of an Obama campaign office in Denver the other day. But when it comes to threatening to do crazy things if the election does not go their way, Obama supporters definitely take the cake.
  The following are 50 crazy things that Obama supporters are threatening to do if Romney wins...
  1. if romney wins i will cry in the fetal position every day (Source)
  2. I'm serious: if Mitt Romney wins the presidency I'm moving to La Jolla to live in his vacant mansion #election (Source)
  3. #IfObamaDontWin ima be walking around playing #2Pac with a 38 on my hip every where i go" (Source)
  4. Best believe if Romney wins I'm dropping out and selling drugs (Source)
  5. If romney win ima start bac robbin white folks.! (Source)
  6. if Romney actually wins, I'm starting a riot (Source)
  7. If Romney take away weave & my yams(foodstamps) . Ima get his White Asz (Source)
  8. If Mitt Romney wins , I'm never having sex again! (Source)
  9. if Romney wins and there's a riot, I'm participating! (Source)
  10. #IfObamaDontWin hell yeah America should riot and kill Romney!!! (Source)
  11. if #Romney becomes president ima find away to be in the black panthers so we can take that mf out. (Source)
  12. If Mitt Romney wins the election, I volunteer as tribute for the Hunger Games (Source)
  13. If Romney Get Elected , The Only Hope Ima Have Is Sellin Dope ! #Gshit (Source)
  14. Why ppl say if Romney win it's back to the feilds? Lol if he win ima blow the white house up (Source)
  15. If mitt Romney gets elected then ima buy all the tampons in the store!!!!!!!! And probably buy them in bulk from Sam's club (Source)
  16. If Romney takes away food stamps 2 Chainzz in this bit IMMA START A RIOT (Source)
  17. If romney do win.. This riot is gon help out my christmas shoppin alot lol (Source)
  18. I think we are all being too kind as Dems. If Romney wins see how kind he will be to our Middle class disappearing pockets. This is war! (Source)
  19. If Romney wins I'm moving out of the country.. (Source)
  20. If Romney wins who's moving to Canada with me? (Source)
  21. #IfObamaDontWin Im moving to mexico lol (Source)
  22. I swear if #Romney wins Im legit packing up my stuff and moving to england!! I cant stand him! He always changes his mind! (Source)
  23. #IfObamaDontWin Why hello Italy.. I'm going back. (Source)
  24. If Romney wins the election I'm fleeing to Brazil after graduation. (Source)
  25. #IfObamaDontWin Im Moving To Ghana (Source)
  26. #IfObamaDontWin I'm Moving to Zimbabwe. (Source)
  27. I'm an undecided voter. I haven't decided where I'm moving if Romney wins. (Source)
  28. My mom said if Romney wins we're leaving the country ^.^ (Source)
  29. #IfObamaDontWin people are gunna move to a different country were they can get financial help (Source)
  30. I think ima start a riot if romney win. (Source)
  31. Maybe workers should stand together and tell bosses if Romney wins they're walking off the job. (Source)
  32. If I see another "Romney" sign I swear ima knock it down... -_- #Obama2012 (Source)
  33. Ima start stealing Romney signs for a bonfire lol (Source)
  34. if romney wins our ppl will riot.... (Source)
  35. If Romney became President and took away welfare Downtown Cincinnati would become a riot (Source)
  36. If Mitt Romney wins come Nov. I'm becoming an Atheist Nun, just to shut-down those dickheads that want take control over me. (Source)
  37. If romney becomes president just know it's gone be a RiOT ! People can't stand him. (Source)
  38. Guys if Romney wins that means no more food stamps. The hood is about to have its own hunger games... (Source)
  39. Oh wow! I heard there is gunna be a big riot if Romney wins! (Source)
  40. When Romney wins, deys arl gonna riot and kill the cwacker, and da rest of da whiteys too. (I CAN'T F$KING WAIT!) I need a target rich envir (Source)
  41. @FloggerBarb LMAO! Naw, my homeboy paged me. Say he gots to axe me a question about rioting #ifobamadontwin holla, jig! (Source)
  42. If mitt Romney wins instead of ridin round wit da Nina we Gonn be ridin round wit dat pistol (Source)
  43. Dear American pro-lifers, if Mitt Romney becomes president, I will personally abort one foetus for every vote he wins. #tryme (Source)
  44. I Heard Mitt Romney , Tryna Take Away Food Stamps , If He Do ."IMA START A RIOT , IMA START A RIOT" (Source)
  45. If Romney wins Ima start a riot ill burn the whole White House down (Source)
  46. If Romney wins then ima take it upon myself to assassinate his ass!! (Source)
  47. IF MITT ROMNEY WINS THERE WILL BE A CIVIL WAR (Source)
  48. If Romney wins, I think I'll kill myself. Can't live through the indignity of that on top of a really crappy year. (Source)
  49. I Hope The USA Is Well Aware That If In The Event This Character Romney Wins The Election, The People Will Start A Country Wide Riot! #Power (Source)
  50. If Mit Romney win ima start a fucking riot str8 burning shit down (Source)
  So do you believe that violence will erupt if Romney wins? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below....
Romney's Terrifying Google Search History Leaked
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:56
  BREAKING: Analysts are scrambling to determine what leaked searches like "Blood child, blood on the child" and "must the president look at people" could tell us about Mitt Romney.
  This seems to be as good a summation of the this year's election campaign and the media's reaction to it as any I've seen. via The Onion, of course.
NRC Report: Flooding Is Major Threat To U.S. Nuclear Plants
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:54
  Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?
  Not exactly good news, but good to know if you live anywhere near a high-risk nuclear plant. It's not much of a surprise to learn that the NRC has been working to keep this information from the public:
  An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams -- and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates.
  "The redacted information shows that the NRC is lying to the American public about the safety of U.S. reactors," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists.A redacted version of the report was posted to the NRC website on March 6. An un-redacted version was recently obtained by the environmental group Greenpeace and shared with The Huffington Post.
  Among other things, evidence in the report indicates that the NRC has known for at least the last six years, and perhaps much longer, that failure of a dam upriver from the Oconee Nuclear Station in South Carolina would cause floodwaters to overwhelm the plant's three reactors and their cooling equipment -- not unlike what befell Japan's Fukushima Dai-chi facility after an earthquake and tsunami struck last year. Three reactors at Fukushima experienced a full meltdown, which contaminated surrounding farmland and exiled hundreds of thousands of residents.
  According to the NRC's own calculations, which were also withheld in the version of the report released in March, the odds of the dam near the Oconee plant failing at some point over the next 22 years are far higher than were the odds of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at the Fukushima plant.
  Advocates and engineers also contend that the NRC, by originally releasing only a heavily redacted version of the report, inappropriately invoked security concerns to mask embarrassing information. This includes the full extent of the flood risk at Oconee, which is covered at greatest length in the report, and the continued failure of regulators to require the facility's owner, Duke Energy, to swiftly improve the plant's defenses.The NRC report identifies flood threats from upstream dams at nearly three dozen other nuclear facilities in the United States, including the Fort Calhoun Station in Nebraska, the Prairie Island facility in Minnesota and the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, among others.
Uber gives customers motorcade for President's Day | Technically Incorrect
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:54
  As a special President's Day treat, certain lucky Uber customers in Washington, D.C. receive a presidential-style motorcade, complete with limo and two Chevy Suburbans.
  There don't seem to be too many enjoyable aspects of being president.
  However, it must be nice to know you'll always get to the airport on time because you have a Chevy Suburban back and front, ready to clear traffic for your Town Car to glide through.
  How lovely, then, that Uber--the nice Germanic-sounding people whom you can just text to get a ride--decided to give a few lucky customers a motorcade to celebrate President's Day today.
  All those lucky customers were in Washington, D.C., so its residents must have thought the president was unusually active on his own day.
  Because this was a stunt to generate a little positive publicity for Uber (goodness, it seems to have worked), these rides were called UBERcades.
  They also featured three people who were all dolled up like Secret Service agents.
  In immediately posting this to YouTube, the company admitted that its agents were, sadly, not empowered to clear traffic.
  Nor, indeed, did they have "tear gas, bulletproof armor, or a backup oxygen system in the trunk"--all of which seem useful when driving around many U.S. cities.
  Still, this is an adorable wheeze that will surely earn Uber some votes when people next elect to drink too much and need chauffeuring to a place of rest.
Dead US Ambassador Documented Creation of Benghazi Terror Emirate
  Link to Article
  Source: Land Destroyer
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:47
  Late US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens documented the transformation of Benghazi, Libya into overt base of operations for Al Qaeda. by Tony Cartalucci"I have met with these brave fighters, and they are not Al-Qaeda. To the contrary: They are Libyan patriots who want to liberate their nation. We should help them do it." -Senator John McCain in Benghazi, Libya April 22, 2011.
  October 20, 2012 - The Washington Times, in an article titled, "Ambassador Stevens warned of Islamic extremism before Benghazi attack," reported:Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, in a diplomatic cable from Libya last June, cited the apparent rise of ''Islamic extremism'' and the spotting of ''the Al Qaeda flag'' over buildings outside the city of Benghazi, where he and three other Americans were ultimately killed in an attack on Sept. 11.
  The Washington Times would quote Stevens as writing:"A number of local contacts agreed, noting that Islamic extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Libya and that the Al Qaeda flag has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities'' in a small Libyan city about 100 miles east of Benghazi."
  While all of this is depicted by the Western media as a recent revelation made only after the death of Ambassador Stevens, journalists around the world had documented and warned of the dangers of arming "pro-democracy protesters" who were clearly militant extremists, actively carrying out terrorism for at least three decades in the Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) region. These warning came just as NATO bombs began to fall on Libya in 2011, and were reiterated many times before the bombing concluded.Video: March, 2011, shortly after NATO began bombing Libya, journalists the world over were warning that the so-called "pro-democracy" protesters the West was purportedly protecting were in fact notorious extremist groups with a 30 year history of terrorism in Libya and abroad. Dr. Webster Tarpley provided documented evidence collected from the US Army's own West Point study, indicating the the epicenter of the so-called "revolution," was in fact the global epicenter of Al Qaeda recruitment. It would be in this epicenter that John McCain would give his speech, and where Ambassador Stevens would later be killed.Geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley, in March of 2011, published a report titled, "The CIA's Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq," where a 2007 West Point study implicated Libya's Cyrenaica region as the global epicenter for Al Qaeda recruitment. The most prominent militant group in the region was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf) as an international terrorist organization.The United Nations, in addition to labeling LIFG as a terrorist organization, designated it as being in association with Al Qaeda, a designation that was made in 2001, a decade before NATO's military intervention.
  While the Western press and State Department officials attempt to claim the extremists operating in Benghazi are merely "affiliated" with Al Qaeda, this is an understatement. LIFG is Al Qaeda, and has been officially since 2007. The West Point report titled, "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq" stated:
  The apparent surge in Libyan recruits traveling to Iraq may be linked the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group's (LIFG) increasingly cooperative relationship with al'�Qa'ida, which culminated in the LIFG officially joining al'�Qa'ida on November 3, 2007. (page 9, .pdf)
  To this day, LIFG leaders are alleged to occupy the highest echelons of Al Qaeda, with the recently deceased Abu Yahya al-Libi (the Libyan) having played a role in both terror outfits. With West Point's 2007 report and the UN's 2001 official designation, it is clear that NATO's decision to arm these groups was an act of unprecedented, blatant state sponsorship of terrorism. That the UN mandated NATO's intervention, undermines entirely the "primacy of international law."Warning Signs Were Covered Up, Not Ignored.While the Western press glossed over stories covering the hoisting of Al Qaeda flags described by Ambassador Stevens in his cables, the development was covered across the alternative media, including in, "John McCain: Founding Father of the Terrorist Emirate of Benghazi," where the full implications and genesis of these prevailing extremists forces were examined in detail. Alternative analysis was quickly dismissed as "conspiracy theories," even as Ambassador Stevens was sending his cables to Washington conveying exactly the same information.
  The West did not "ignore" these warnings. It covered them up intentionally through a concerted campaign of deceit, cognitive infiltration, and ridicule. The intelligence services of Washington and London had been supplying weapons and aid to the terrorists of Benghazi for 30 years, fought along side them in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980's, armed and unleashed them in Kosovo in the 1990's, and willfully bolstered their numbers, armament, and operational capacity in 2011 in order to overthrow the Libyan government.
  The terror emirate of Benghazi that consumed Ambassador Stevens is a monster of the West's own willful, premeditated creation - the West fully cognizant of the implications - and a monster the West is currently still arming, funding, and supporting, this time along the Turkish-Syrian border.
  US, NATO, and "International Community" to Willfully Repeat "Mistake" in Syria.
  Indeed, the very terrorists that have turned Benghazi into a terror emirate, with Al Qaeda flags waving freely over government buildings, and responsible for the death of a US Ambassador, are being sent to the Turkish-Syrian border where NATO member Turkey is harboring them while the US arms them with Saudi and Qatari purchased weapons.
  In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, "Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group," would report:
  Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey," said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. "Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there."
  Another Telegraph article, "Libya's new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels," would admitSyrian rebels held secret talks with Libya's new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad's regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
  At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested "assistance" from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers."There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria," said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see."Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and more recently, CNN, whose Ivan Watson accompanied terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo, revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants, particularly Libyans. It was admitted that:Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade's ranks.A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a "platoon" of Libyan fighters to armed movement. CNN also added:On Wednesday, CNN's crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.
  The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as '... a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.
  CNN's reports provide bookends to 2011's admissions that large numbers of Libyan terrorists flush with NATO cash and weapons had headed to Syria, with notorious terrorist LIFG commanders making the arrangements.In essence, Syria has been under invasion for nearly a year by Libyan terrorists - the very same terrorists who have overrun Benghazi and killed a US ambassador, fully facilitated by NATO. In addition to these terrorists, Turkey and the United States are also arming and funding Muslim Brotherhood militants as well as fighters from US State Department-listed Ansar al-Islam.
  To explain this to the public, the Western press is claiming that the weapons are inadvertently ending up in the hands of extremists, despite the CIA operating along the border allegedly steering weapons into the hands of "more secular" militants.
  In June of 2012, the New York Times in an article titled, "C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," claimed:
  A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.
  The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria's Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.
  The C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said.
  Then, apparently right under the nose of the CIA and NATO, the New York Times reported on October 14, 2012 in their article, "Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria," that: Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.
  Clearly, there are only two explanations. The CIA is inept and should be held accountable for its profound and repeated failures, or the same verified lies told by the West in regards to Libya are being repeated in Syria.Either way, the West, though its demonstrable actions, has forfeited its self-proclaimed authority to intervene beyond its borders, based on "international law" it willfully, openly, and repeatedly violates, selectively enforces, and otherwise manipulates to achieve its extraterritorial ambitions - and must be excluded entirely from any solution implemented to resolve the violence unfolding in Syria.
United States, Iran agree to one-on-one nuclear talks : New York Times
  Link to Article
  Source: Reuters: World News
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:12
  WASHINGTON | Sat Oct 20, 2012 7:17pm EDT
  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Iran have agreed for the first time to one-on-one negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing Obama administration officials.
  Iranian officials have insisted the talks not begin until after the November 6 U.S. election because they want to know which U.S. president they will be negotiating with, a senior administration official told the Times.
  The Times said the agreement was the result of secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Barack Obama's term in 2009.
  The White House declined to comment on the Times report when contacted by Reuters.
  The United States and other Western powers have charged that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, but Tehran insists the program is for peaceful purposes. Israel has said it would use military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
  Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has attacked Obama for failing to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. The two candidates will meet on Monday in their final debate, which will focus on foreign policy.
  The U.S.-Iranian agreement had been reached with senior Iranian officials who report to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an unnamed administration official told the Times.
CNN Chiefs Orders All Its Reporters Not To Criticize Candy Crowley
  Link to Article
  Source: Set You Free News
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:11
  by Jon Rappoport | Jon Rappoport's Blog
  Crowley, the presidential debate moderator on Tuesday night, has just been given a coat of Teflon by her CNN boss.
  In an extraordinary move, CNN managing editor Mark Whitaker sent an email to all his staff with an unequivocal message: don't mess with our Candy.
  Whitaker's statement effectively squelched the possibility that any CNN reporter would take Crowley to task for siding with Obama on the Libya situation, during the second presidential debate.
  ''Let's start with a big round of applause for Candy Crowley for her superb job under the most difficult circumstances imaginable,'' Whitaker wrote.
  End of controversy at CNN.
  You can read Whitaker's full email here:
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219402/Candy-Crowley-CNN-chief-praises-moderator-superb-job-Obama-Romney.html
  I contacted a well-known national news reporter at another network, who stated he'd never encountered such a blatant piece of in-house censorship in his years of work.
  Whitaker has circled the wagons at CNN, and from this moment forward, it's ''Candy is the greatest'' or shut up.
  Obviously, Whitaker makes no distinction between Crowley's job as a CNN reporter and her work as presidential debate moderator. The CNN corporation must be protected.
  Perhaps Whitaker should have passed his reporters some cash with a curt ''loose lips sink ships'' and have done with it.
  Back in 2008, when he was NBC's Washington bureau chief, Whitaker exercised the same ''objectivity'' during an interview with Andrea Mitchell. He commented on the McCain campaign: ''Obviously, it's true that they don't want to talk about the state of the economy'...''
  In a 2009 piece for the Washington Post, Whitaker engaged in a sophomoric examination of Obama's first year in the White House, explaining the president's problems as the result of a dislocated childhood. Obama's decision to impose rigid order on his life was a defense against the chaos of his upbringing, but wasn't effective as a strategy in the rough-and-tumble world of Washington politics. Really. Yawn. Sob.
  It would make things a lot more interesting and easy if Whitaker just came out and said, ''Vote for Obama.''
  But people like Whitaker get their jobs in the news business in part because they know how to carve the news up delicately and serve it selectively. They're adept at weaseling, in other words.
  That's why it's surprising that Whitaker just emailed that heavy bomb to his staff. Nothing subtle there. In fact, in an example of prime buffoonery, Whitaker claimed that Crowley gave Obama more air time than Romney in the debate because Obama talks more slowly.
  I see. So now we're measuring out fair and balanced minutes on the basis of'...the'...candidates''....cadence. What happens in 2016 if one of the parties runs a candidate who utters six words a minute? Does he get a full 90 minutes to enunciate his positions? What happens if a candidate takes a question and just stares blankly at the audience for a minute or two while trying to come up with a suitable lie? Is that subtracted from or added to his allotted time?
  CNN is a sinking ship because people are waking up to the fact that its veneer of objectivity is simply a cover for ugly liberalism; just as FOX's brass-band front is a cover for ''all big corporations are good corporations.''
  As they say about an athlete, ''He's juicing.'' Both networks (all major networks) are on a steroid roll, claiming to handle news with meticulous concern for facts, while on a massive hustle to get over on the public with their covert political preferences.
  Turns out, in this case, Candy Crowley and Whitaker are operatives for the Left. Their moves are those of rank amateurs. I know pool rooms and card rooms where their act would be laughed out of existence in about two minutes.
  With these two bumblers, the word transparency takes on new meaning.
  '--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--
  Jon Rappoport
  The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
10 19 2012 97411 european council vlog 16 9
  Link to Article
  Source: Uploads by HermanVanRompuy
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 03:01
Mother of Slain Diplomat To Obama '' '' My Son Is Not Very Optimal '' My Son Is Very Dead ''
  Link to Article
  Source: The Ulsterman Report
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 02:28
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Thread: Romnesia.
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 02:19
  Look at all the women watching the President bring a new word into our vocabulary.
  BTW, Romnesia is a good response to the Romneys calling the President a child.
  Okay you call me a child, I'll say you're crazy.
  Watch the Romneys come back to say Obama is not respectful enough.
Thread: I'm okay with Romney winning.
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 02:18
  If Romney wins, I'm okay with it, because Obama has run a decent campaign, and a mostly honest one. And if people prefer Romney, then we deserve what we get. And I think it'll be really radical. There's a huge difference in direction for us based on who wins this election.
  I think we understand now that Romney doesn't stand for anything. He doesn't even understand the idea of having a political cause worth fighting for. He isn't pro-life or pro-choice. He doesn't want to do anything in particular.
  Once elected he will revert back to what he was in the primary. I think his choice of Ryan as VP cemented that. I think Ryan will run the Presidency as much as Cheney did. He's got the support in Congress. The only hope against that is if the Democrats keep the Senate, and if they refuse to deal with the Republicans with the same tenacity that the Republicans refused to work with Obama. But I wouldn't hold my breath for that. There are Democrats from red states in the Senate, who might not want to take the chance of crossing the Republicans, assuming they hold the White House and the House.
  I think you'll see the Ryan budget pass, pretty quickly -- if Romney wins.
  I read about this in a great piece by Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine.
  The flipside is also true. Even if Obama loses both houses of Congress, his veto power will be all he'll need to radically rewrite the budget in his own image, because of the wonderful "fiscal cliff" that's coming up.
  In order to raise taxes and drastically cut the military budget (and profits to the defense industry, a Repulbican patron), he has to do exactly nothing. Just kick back and watch the Republicans set their hair on fire. It'll be a thing to behold. Can Obama resist making a deal with them for a while, just for the fun of watching them get a dose of their own tactics?
  This cliff is nowhere near as dangerous as the one the Repubs pushed us to the brink of in August 2011. It's a good time to call their bluff. Especially after winning the election he wasn't supposed to win. :-)
  I'm not saying either scenario plays out, but I'm okay with either.
  1. We get what we deserve.
  2. The Repubs get what they deserve.
Daily Press Briefing - October 19, 2012
  Link to Article
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 02:13
  12:56 p.m. EDT
  MS. NULAND: Okay, I have a couple of things at the top.
  As most of you know, the Secretary is traveling to northern Haiti on Monday, October 22nd. This is her first trip to the north of Haiti. She will be delivering remarks on a new day in Haiti at the formal opening of the Caracol Industrial Park, which showcases the region's achievements in agribusiness, energy, light manufacturing, tourism, and artisan crafts. She'll also be visiting a nearby housing site which is under construction, and a recently completed power plant. While there, she'll meet with President Martelly, Prime Minister Lamothe, local officials, and she will be accompanied by Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
  One more, which is to advise that from October 21st to the 31st, so starting on Sunday, the Department of State, partnering with the American Council of Young Political Leaders, will host a 10 day Active Citizen Summit for 60 young leaders age 18 to 35 from across the Middle East and North Africa. They will be doing leadership development workshops, short internships, policy discussions, and various presentations starting in San Francisco. And then they'll do internships either in California, North Carolina, or Utah.
  Let's go to what's on your minds.
  QUESTION: Sorry, just on that '' the whole thing goes to the 31st?
  MS. NULAND: Yes.
  QUESTION: So it ends in a big Halloween party?
  MS. NULAND: I hope so, gee.
  QUESTION: All right. Lebanon, let's start with: One, what do you know, if anything, about this explosion and who it may or may not have targeted, who died? And two, more generally, because I understand '' I realize you probably don't have a huge amount of information about it, given that it just happened '' but more broadly, does this raise your concerns about spill-over from Syria?
  MS. NULAND: Well, first of all we condemn in the strongest terms this apparent act of terrorism that took place today in Beirut's Achrafieh neighborhood. There is no justification for such violence. The Government of Lebanon is obviously going to have to conduct an investigation, and you are right, Matt, that we do not yet have details either on who the perpetrators were. We do know that our Embassy personnel are all accounted for. We also don't have any reports at this stage of American citizens having been victims. We obviously express our heartfelt sympathies for the families and the loved ones of those who were killed and injured, and we stand by the people of Lebanon and renew our commitment to a stable, sovereign, and independent Lebanon.
  With regard to your ''
  QUESTION: Well, wait '' before '' just before you go to the second part of the question, you condemn this ''apparent'' act of terrorism?
  MS. NULAND: Well, it ''
  QUESTION: So, I mean, I'm just curious. Is there a reason ''
  MS. NULAND: It was a car bomb. We have no reason to believe it wasn't terrorism, but obviously the Lebanese ''
  QUESTION: Do you want to say that '' do you want to change your '' what you said to say, ''We condemn this act of terrorism'' rather than ''apparent act of terrorism?''
  MS. NULAND: Look, again '' yes, we condemn this act of terrorism. You are right; there is no justification for the word ''apparent'' in this sentence.
  QUESTION: Okay. All right. Then the second part of the question, which is concern about '' sorry, I just '' (laughter) '' I mean, why would you '' if you're not sure it's terror, if it was some accidental gas explosion, you wouldn't be strongly condemning it, right?
  MS. NULAND: Look, it was a '' right. I mean, it was a car bomb, so '' but of course there has to be an investigation as to the intent.
  QUESTION: The second part, which was: Does this make you concerned, or increase your concerns about spillover from Syria?
  MS. NULAND: Well again, as I said, we don't yet have any information about who the perpetrators are. We have been saying for a number of weeks and, in fact, months now that we've been concerned about increasing tensions inside of Lebanon, particularly sectarian tensions and tensions as a result of spillover from Syria. But I don't want to prejudge before the Lebanese authorities have had a chance to declare themselves who is responsible here.
  Please.
  QUESTION: Sort of related, but slightly different '' there was another bomb attack in '' this time in Bahrain, where a policeman was attacked by a '' the government says a policeman was attacked by protestors with an IED and firebombs or whatever. What's your comment on that? And they're calling that an act of terrorism. Do you agree that that's the case there?
  MS. NULAND: Well, we obviously strongly condemn today's attack with an explosive device that killed one police officer and critically injured another in Bahrain. We extend our sympathies to their families as well. We are continuing to follow this incident closely and to urge all members of Bahraini society to condemn and renounce violence. Violence of any kind by any side only undermines the trust that is necessary in Bahrain to pursue meaningful reconciliation.
  It's incumbent on all segments of Bahraini society to contribute to a climate that is conducive to reconciliation. I'm not in a position to give an assessment with regard to terrorism or how this particular incident went forward in Bahrain. We'll have to see what the Bahraini authorities have to say.
  QUESTION: Just more broadly on the question of Bahrain, I mean, you '' this building and the Secretary have been pressing them for a good long time now ''
  MS. NULAND: Yes.
  QUESTION: -- to get this political dialogue up and running, but it seems like it's sort of going nowhere. What more can or should the U.S. do here to help this key ally and home of the Fifth Fleet?
  MS. NULAND: Well, you know that we have regularly engaged with the Government of Bahrain, including the Secretary's personal engagement. We've had Assistant Secretary Posner out there regularly to talk about national reconciliation. He was there, I believe, at the end of the summer. Again, our policy remains the same. Our advocacy both to the Bahraini Government and to groups in opposition is that they need to follow the recommendations of the BICI Commission and sit down together and work on national reconciliation. That's still the only path forward that we see, and we are encouraging both sides to roll up their sleeves and get to it.
  QUESTION: Just on this bombing theme '' just before you came out here, and '' you probably don't know about this '' but there was a report of a bomb going off in a shopping mall in Jordan. Do you know anything about that?
  MS. NULAND: I did not have that before coming down. Obviously, if we have a comment on that, we'll get back to you.
  Yes.
  QUESTION: Among those killed in Beirut was a senior Lebanese intelligence official, Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, who had led the probe into the death of the Prime Minister there in 2005. Does that suggest '' first of all, can you tell us anything about whether Lebanese intelligence officials are saying that he was a target, whether that suggests pro-Assad forces might indeed be behind that and therefore that the spillover is really underway?
  MS. NULAND: Well, we saw '' we've seen those press reports with regard to that individual. I'm not in a position to confirm it, nor has it been confirmed to us by Lebanese authorities. So I don't want to get ahead of what we are hearing.
  Please, Goyal.
  QUESTION: On Pakistan. Mr. Altaf Hussain, one of the major politicians in Pakistan from London '' from England, he said that Pakistan has to decide today what kind of Pakistan they want in the future, whether founder of Pakistan, Mr. Jinnah's Pakistan or Taliban's Pakistan. Do you have any comments on that?
  MS. NULAND: Well, I don't have anything particularly innovative to say on that subject. You know where we have been, that we want to see a strong, democratic Pakistan that works well with us and with the international community in addressing the terror challenges it has; that we are reengaging after some period now in trying to get our working groups and other things back up and running to support our joint efforts to meet the terror challenge, and that is '' that's the trajectory that we're on. But I don't have any particular comment on that comment if that's what you're asking.
  QUESTION: One more, related: Now this 14-year-old girl who was shot in Pakistan, she is '' Malawa '' she is now in U.K., in Birmingham for further advanced medical treatment. I saw millions of people throughout Pakistan praying for her '' innocent people, common people '' but I didn't see any comment from any politicians or from any government officials condemning Taliban, or they are just quiet on this issue, the way she was speaking out. But I have not seen anybody from the political system speaking out the way she did.
  MS. NULAND: My recollection of this, and you'll need to check, was that President Zardari spoke out the day of or the day after the attack. Let me, though, take this opportunity, first to commend the UAE, who transported her, and the U.K., who are treating her for those efforts, and to express our continued hopes for her full, speedy recovery.
  Anything else? Are we finished? No. Catherine.
  QUESTION: On Libya, there are now reports that the CIA station chief in Libya sent a cable 24 hours after the attack in Benghazi saying that it wasn't carried out '' that it was carried out by militants. Did that cable ever cross over and reach the State Department, do you know?
  MS. NULAND: Well, I think you know, Catherine, that we never talk about intelligence issues from this podium at all. So I'm not in a position to comment on that here today.
  QUESTION: Wait a second, that's not true.
  MS. NULAND: Here we go.
  QUESTION: You talk about intelligence issues when you want to talk about them and when it's in your interest to do so.
  MS. NULAND: That's fair.
  QUESTION: Yes.
  MS. NULAND: And when the intelligence community '' (laughter) '' when the intelligence community --
  QUESTION: When the intelligence makes you look good, then you're willing to talk about it.
  MS. NULAND: -- when the intelligence community releases intelligence information into an unclassified format.
  Please.
  QUESTION: On Mali, I just wondered if you could respond to the EU statement today that the crisis in Mali poses an imminent threat to Europe, talk of targeted sanctions, and what material support the U.S. might provide a foreign interventionist force?
  MS. NULAND: Well, I think you know where we've been on Mali, that we supported the UN Security Council resolution recently passed which calls for ECOWAS to continue working with the transitional authorities in Bamako to flesh out the elements of a peacekeeping mission. We have expressed our support for that and our willingness to support ECOWAS materially in any way that they are interested in discussing with us or other members of the international community.
  There is today an African Union-sponsored meeting ongoing in Bamako to look at how to coordinate the international community's response, not only in fleshing out the peacekeeping mission but also in offering political support, economic support, et cetera. And we have two participants in that meeting '' the director of our Office of West African Affairs, Ambassador Eunice Reddick is there, as is our director of the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Peace Operations and Sanctions, Raffi Gregorian. So our hope is that that meeting will support the transitional authorities in Bamako in presenting a coherent plan that includes political elements, economic elements, and advances the peacekeeping effort that ECOWAS will be leading.
  I think you know that we want to see this crisis addressed in all of its elements '' the political crisis; we want to see the people of Mali get the elections that they deserve by April; the rebellion waged by the Touaregs, the violent extremists who are trying to exploit that, and the humanitarian crisis across the Sahel.
  Please.
  QUESTION: If I could follow on that. Is it your expectation that this meeting in Bamako is actually going to produce this coherent plan, or is this just sort of step one of what could be a multi-step process?
  MS. NULAND: I think it's step one in the international community trying to support ECOWAS in getting some clarity out of the officials in Bamako about how they want to proceed moving forward, not only on the ECOWAS mission but also on their political plan, their Touareg '' their reconciliation plan with the north, all of those elements. So it's a first step since the UN Security Council resolution was passed.
  Please.
  QUESTION: Yes. According to variety of sources, Turkey has been engaged in discussion with both the opposition of some of them, and the government to find a way for peaceful --
  MS. NULAND: Are we in Syria? What country are we in?
  QUESTION: Syria, (inaudible).
  MS. NULAND: Syria, thank you.
  QUESTION: To find a way peaceful '' for peaceful negotiated settlement. (A) Are you aware about those discussion; (B) do you encourage it, and under which terms?
  MS. NULAND: You're talking about Government of Turkey's --
  QUESTION: Yeah.
  MS. NULAND: -- Turkey initiatives to broker --
  QUESTION: Turkey's been in discussion with both of them to find a way if there's '' if it is possible.
  MS. NULAND: Well, I think you know that with regard to Turkey's efforts in Syria, we have been in very close bilateral consultation with Turkey. We've also been working with Turkey in the ad hoc group on Syria and the larger Friends of the Syrian People. We compare notes across the board on what we see going on on the ground, on who we see as potential future leaders, any prospects that we see to move a transition forward along the lines that we agreed on in Geneva and since. So we're obviously in contact with the Turks on all of these initiatives.
  QUESTION: But are you aware about discussion, that the Turk --
  MS. NULAND: The particular initiative that you point to sounds like a follow-on to the kinds of things that Turkey's been doing all along, but I can't speak to precisely what it is that you're seeing.
  Anything else? All right.
  QUESTION: Thank you.
  (The briefing was concluded at 1:12 p.m.)
  DPB #180
Lefty Nutjobs Martin Sheen, Woody Harrelson, Ed Asner Star in 9/11 Truther Movie
  Link to Article
  Source: Debbie Schlussel
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 02:04
  By Debbie Schlussel
  I suppose it's predictable that a nutty conspiracy theory movie about 9/11 would star left-wing nutjobs such as Martin Sheen, Woody Harrelson, and Ed Asner. The only one missing is Rosie O'Donnell. While it's called ''September Morn,'' a better title would be ''Three Angry Nutjobs, er . . . Men.''
  Three Men & a Conspiracy Theory
  I have a strong personal distaste for that zhlub Ed Asner, a proud member of Actors & Artists for 9/11 Truth. It goes back to a letter my late father wrote to him, which made national news. In the 1980s, Asner wrote a solicitation letter for the re-election campaign of far-left Democratic Jewish Congressman Howard Wolpe of Michigan. The letter stressed Asner's Judaism and urged Jews to give Wolpe money. But Asner is an Israel-hating schmuck and JINO (Jew In Name Only), and my dad was incensed when he received Asner's fundraising letter. My father made national news when he wrote a letter responding to Ed Asner along with an endorsement for and a contribution check made out to Asner's opponent, Reagan employee and conservative Republican Jackie MacGregor. Mrs. MacGregor released my dad's letter to the press and the story made national news. It was a great letter, and one of these days, I'll dig it up and post it. My dad really told old Ed where to go.
  I continue to share my late father's disdain for Ed Asner, and this new movie only reaffirms that he was right about this a-hole. In those days, Asner was active in a self-hating group called, ''New Jewish Agenda.'' In those days, it was a fringe group, but these days, the New Jewish Agenda types are, sadly, running the organized Jewish community. G-d truly works in mysterious ways, given that my father died of cancer and, yet, this major scumbag is still alive at age 82.
  Fleur De Lis Film Studios will produce September Morn, a dramatic look into the arguments of ''Truthers,'' those that believe the attacks of September 11 were an inside job fueled by the American government. The movie will attempt to find financial backers at this year's American Film Market, but a name cast should make for an easy sell.
  Woody Harrelson, Martin Sheen, and Ed Asner are all attached to star in the project, which Fleur De Lis' site describes as being ''in the vein of Twelve Angry Men.'' The film will be directed by BJ Davis, whose previous credits include 1989 Brandon Lee sci-fi movie Laser Mission, the TV special Charlie Sheen's Stunts Spectacular, and the instructional video How to Become a Hollywood Stuntman (Davis coordinated stunts on such films as Volunteers, Hot Shots!, and Star Trek VI).
  It's unclear how September Morn will represent the ideas behind the Truther movement '-- descriptions insinuate a docudrama fiction film that may also utilize expert opinions in the style of documentary '-- but judging from the promotional poster, the film aims to boldly present the theories from one side. Harrelson, Sheen, and Asner are open about their own position on the conspiracy, aligning themselves with the Actors & Artists for 9/11 Truth organization, along with other famous faces like Rosie O'Donnell, Willie Nelson, Daniel Sunjata, and Charlie Sheen (who seems to be the connective tissue between Davis, Martin Sheen, and many of the organization's members). Their weight in Hollywood should bring September Morn to fruition. If there are enough non-celebrity believers out there, they could also turn the film into the next controversial indie hit.
  Wow, working with Charlie ''Winning'' Sheen! You can't get more impressive cinematic credentials than that. Sounds like this steaming piece of celluloid crap will go straight to video, where I'm sure it will become a cult classic among America's ever-increasing population of morons.
  Given that they are making a movie out of this conspiracy theory nonsense, how long until Hollywood bankrolls the ''Jews Control the International Banking System'' movie? And, yet, I still haven't receive my share or invite to the board meeting.
CNBC - UKIP leader Nigel Farage on Starbucks corporate tax rates - October 2012
  Link to Article
  Source: Uploads by ukipmedia
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:55
Challenges - Obama for America TV Ad - YouTube
  Link to Article
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:53
What it's like to be on Jeopardy
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:46
  A spam filter almost scotched my chance to be on television. I was scanning through the usual detritus of offers in July 2011 to enhance body parts and transfer large sums of money from people in distant lands, and spotted this subject line:
  Jeopardy! Contestant Audition in Seattle
  Ha! That's a new scam, I thought, before I recollected that I had taken the Jeopardy quiz show's online screening test earlier in 2011. While I have been told my entire life that I would be perfect on Jeopardy due to my ability to retain and produce (on demand or in spite of protestations not to) trivial information, I thought I scored poorly on the online test. Apparently not.
  I called the number in the email after first confirming via Google that it was actually connected to Sony Pictures Entertainment, which produces the show, and was told that, yes, it was legit. A year later, I found myself at Sony Pictures in a suit and a tie shaking hands with Alex Trebek, and hearing the dulcet tones of announcer Johnny Gilbert say my name.
  If you have access to this quaint thing called "broadcast television," whether over the air or through cable or satellite receivers, you might have seen me win $15,199 last night by ultimately correctly recalling Karl Marx's name in the nick of time. That was a squeaker. I'll be on again this evening, and you'll see how I perform this time around.
  Jeopardy is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. Everyone I know seems to have watched it as a kid, and some friends and colleagues' parents continue to watch it every night. The show had a top viewership of 50 million in the 1990s, but has declined to about 9 million today. The last time you may have thought about it, if you're a typical Boing Boing reader, is when you heard that Ken Jennings won 74 episodes in a row after the program lifted a five-win maximum. (Ken was an outlier. Few people have won more than five episodes since, and no one has come close to his run.)
  Because it's in syndication, you can't stream it online. The show must police its copyright quite rigorously, too, as it's hard to find more than a handful of short bits on YouTube and elsewhere. Thus, the only way to experience it is to watch or record it when it's broadcast. (Someone uploaded a few minutes of last night's last clues and Final Jeopardy to YouTube, where it's still available at the moment.)
  Achieving an ostensible lifelong goal was just as good as I'd hoped, especially since I won. The show requires that contestants be coy since it's taped two months in advance. We're not supposed to disclose outcomes, and I even waited until this week, when contestants' pictures are posted on the Jeopardy Web site, to promote my appearance. All I can say as this is published today (Friday) after winning a single game, I may lose tonight or I may still be flying down every week or two to record more shows. You won't know I've lost until you see a putative future episode in which I am no longer champion.
  After my first (and only?) stint on the show, a friend of mine pointed out that while Jeopardy appears to be a quiz show, it's really a very particular form of a reality show. It's like The Amazing Race with most (but not all) of the personality stripped out. Instead of competing Survivor-like in physically intense challenges with deprivations and also trying to manage the social calculus of not being voted off, Jeopardy reduces us mostly to brains and reflexes.
  This starts with the selection process. For decades, Jeopardy had cattle-call auditions in which interested people were called in to take a quick test. Those that scored well continued on, and some made it on the air. But most people were sent away. This is, of course, highly inefficient. Three years ago, the show switched to an online screening test, and now has 100,000 people take that quiz each year.
  From the 100,000, the contestant coordinators winnow out about 2,000 to 3,000, they say, for in-person auditions, like the one I went to in August 2011. The audition is intended to make sure that people perform well on the show, and starts out with a 50-question rapid-fire exam in which answers don't have to be in the form of questions. It then proceeds into a quite realistic simulation of the show with signaling buzzers, a game board, and an interview section.
  (Quick Jeopardy review: Three rounds. Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy, Final Jeopardy. First two rounds have 30 clues each divided into six categories, hidden on the board behind dollar amounts. Jeopardy questions are $200, $400, $600, $800, and $1,000. Double Jeopardy doubles that. Clues are in the form of an answer to which an appropriately phrased question must be posed by the contestant when called upon by Alex Trebek. A hidden Daily Double (one in the first round, two in the second) allows a contestant to bet either as much as they have accumulated so far, or, if a low or negative amount, up to the top dollar value on the board. In Final Jeopardy, you may bet up to whatever you have in your account on a single question with 30 seconds to answer. The show's winner by dollar amount keeps those funds; second and third prizes are $2,000 and $1,000. The one-day record is $77,000, but $15,000 to $20,000 is a more typical haul.)
  The show wasn't and isn't looking solely for smart people who test well. Rather, they want people with a combination of traits: a deep knowledge well, the ability to retrieve an answer quickly, unflappability, a decent personal presentation and personability. The 21 people in my audition slot in Seattle (including an old friend I ran into who had auditioned before) for the most part had those characteristics.
  If contestants were cast simply by rote memorization and rapid-retrieval abilities, you know the result, because you see it at technology trade shows and engineering colleges: a row of people, mostly men, would affectlessly and rapidly answer every question as fast as possible and seem somewhat unsympathetic. They might not even scream or smile when they won. That's not good TV. The show wants people who have a few interesting stories about themselves, and to whom the 10 million or so home viewers will be able to relate. They can't be super-brainiacs, because that deflates viewers playing along at home.
  The questions on Jeopardy are difficult across the dimension of time and context, but typically not hard at all in the wider world of trivia and knowledge competitions that Ken Jennings (the 74-time Jeopardy winner) documents in his neat book Brainiac. (The book alternates covering his Jeopardy career with deep book and on-site research into the history and current practice of trivia competition.)
  Rather, the combination of competition among well-matched players who are very good at this form of testing, but not ridiculously perfect at it, combined with the physical task of depressing a signal button, and the rapid pace of the show produces something people watch night after night.
  From the auditions, Jeopardy calls up about 400 people a year from the general pool across 47 weeks of taping. There are also kids, teen, college, military, and teacher competitions now, as well as an annual tournament among the top-earning or longest-winning players in the season. Every week, 10 new people cycle through; some win and stay on longer as champions, while others appear and disappear in a single episode.
  I thought incorrectly that the number of contestants in a week varied by who won, but my friend Paul Kafasis, a software developer, showed me some queueing theory on a piece of paper that made me smack my head. Every week starts with a returning champion, and each day two new people appear. It's thus nearly always 10 new people each week.
  The exceptions are that it is both possible for everyone in Final Jeopardy to wind up with $0, in which case Alex dismisses them all, or for two or three contestants to finish with exactly the same dollar amount in that final round, in which case the tying parties keep the money and return the next day to battle again. It's rare. The show calls up 12 people for each taping day in which five episodes are recorded in case of illness, ties, or even disqualification. (Eligibility requirements have to be met, such as not having family working for Sony and a number of other companies.)
  I knew my general knowledge was rusty, and consulted piles of almanacs, watched the show, and went through the J-Archive, a compendium of every clue and question ever posed on Jeopardy, run by fans and unaffiliated with the show. I read the three best-known Jeopardy books, too: Secrets of the Jeopardy Champions (1992), Prisoner of Trebekistan (2006), and the aforementioned Brainiac (also 2006). I had coffee with Jennings, who lives in the Seattle area, just before appearing, which was a nice morale boost. (I have an article about the studying process over at The Economist's Babbage blog.)
  Contestants from outside the area tend to all stay at the same hotel a few miles away using a group rate from the studio. Jeopardy doesn't pay expenses to appear, although if you win over a gap in taping and need to return in a week or two for the next show, the program starts picking up airfare. We gathered in a group the Tuesday morning I arrived, all of us dressed nicely for TV and clutching garment bags with the requested outfit changes the show wanted us to bring to make it seem like shows are taped on separate days instead of back to back.
  As expected, it was a lovely cohort. Matt gives away teddy bears for a living. Shaanti works in climate change research. Jan teaches physical education in a college. Abby is a senior at Rutgers University and towered over me. And then there was Stephanie. We arrived in the green room, where pastries, fruit, and caffeine awaited, and were introduced to the...five-time returning champion. Polite, forced smiles.
  Stephanie, we shortly witnessed (as anyone who watched her 8-show run of 7 wins can attest), demonstrates how a human buzzsaw works in practice. She was fast, bright, and brassy, and as an American history professor with a clearly remarkable memory, gave us all whiplash. But she was also great. The secret of Jeopardy, what defuses the reality-show aspect, is that we all universally wanted each other to win even though we knew that only one person took home the big money and would return to fight again. (Don't cry for Stephanie. She won a pile, finishing at about the 12th position among regular season play, and she'll be back for this season's tournament of champions.)
  The show's staff are also fantastic: Glenn, Robert, Corina, and their amazing chief, Maggie, made us laugh, cajoled us, encouraged us, and made sure the game is played fair. Everyone is looking out for fairness, both because of the laws around quiz programs, and because of basic decency. However they hire staff on the show and however they run the program day to day, they do it right. Everyone I had anything to do with was delighted to be there. They give money away every day, and that's their job.
  There's a bit of the reality-show part in just the waiting. You're nervous the night before (or weeks before, even). Then you have to get dressed neatly and hang out with other people, some of whom you will be pitted against in combat. There are hours of briefing and rehearsals. The adrenal gland can only produce so much before it gives up. I developed something I will politely call a "gregarious bladder," which necessitated possibly 30 bathroom trips in the space of a few hours. The other contestants may still wonder if I was a drug addict.
  The actual game play goes by faster than you can remember it happening. Clues come up an average of one every 12 seconds. If played well, you enter a sort of fugue state in which the board and Alex's voice and the signaling button in your hand are all that you hear, see, and feel. When they break for commercial spots, the coordinators and other staff come up with water, make us laugh, give advice about the buzzer. They can't offer tips on information or wagering, but they can help people for whom ringing in isn't going well.
  You can't ring in for regular questions until both Alex finishes reading the clue completely, and then one of the writers presses a release button to unlock the signals. Lights light up on either side of the board when that released button is pressed, but if you rely on the lights, you're too late. You have to time it to start pressing madly at the right millisecond after Alex stops talking or, when competitors also know the right answer, you won't be the first to ring in. Ring in too soon and you're very briefly locked out, giving the edge to someone else with better timing.
  We all get rehearsal time with the buzzer in the morning, but playing the real game is a different experience. Once you've played a game and return, you have more confidence with the device, and are facing other contestants who know you've just won. In Ken Jennings' run, a combination of preternatural signal reflex and the fact that people arrived and were told, "Ken has just won X dozen shows" seemed to give him the edge along with his extraordinary depth of trivia knowledge.
  The strangest thing about appearing on Jeopardy is just how not strange it is. There's no green screen or artificial bits to it. The set is precisely what you see in the broadcast program, with all the lighting and game board and whatnot. It's like stepping into the television set to play. It's more surreal than real. Even the awkward banter with Alex is actually awkward. (If you want to know what I talked to him about over the credits Thursday night, I asked how he wound up at JPL's Curiosity rover landing event alongside our own Xeni Jardin. He's got the space bug, and was invited to be there. He also answers questions from the audience during breaks, and is a very witty and smart guy.)
  Even though I can't tell you what happens next, beyond the fact that I'll be on the air on Friday, too, I can admit that it was a singular experience that stands outside what most of us might expect in a normal, quiet life. The money is nice, and I don't want to pretend it isn't. But I didn't need to win to enjoy being on the show. Jeopardy is a cultural phenomenon, even if its ratings have lagged, and while I may never meet an American president, I got to shake hands with Alex Trebek, look deeply into his eyes, and tell him a ridiculous story about breaking an iPod.
A Dream
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:28
  From the desk of the Tiger Lily.
  I saw an auditorium with Mano Romney and B. Hussein onstage. Romney had on his right arm a red jewel in his hand which he clutched and the more he clutched it, the more power he derived.
  It was wrapped in a crossed pattern with another darker jewel on the back of the hand, and the wrapping was of a tinny gold which went up his arm to his shoulder. A reporter broadcasting about the debate mentioned it was of a Mormon type symbolism of power.
  He gestured with his left arm while he talked and came out from behind the podium and stood in front of Obama. I could see no moderator.
  The audience was upset. A small businessman was upset. A woman made a crude comment later about him being so upset he was sh*tting himself.
  There were four people slightly towards Obama in the front row and second row, two men in front and two women behind, who became unruly and were asked to leave. When they got up, I saw that the seats were blue.
  It is significant. Romney came out from behind the podium and Obama was behind him. It is significant, the gemstones on the right arm, wrapped in tinny gold. It is significant he gestured with his left arm. It is significant business was upset. The number four is significant and the Obama people being asked to leave.
  This is the dream.
  agtG
Big Fail: CBS Pushes Scare Story About Social Security
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:20
  Remember when CBS used to be a trusted name in news? Now, not so much. Trudy Lieberman has been doing truly excellent work at the Columbia Journalism Review, monitoring how the media is spreading the idea that Social Security and Medicare are in crisis, softening up the public for the need for so-called entitlement reform. See if you can catch the many errors/lies in this CBS report!
  The other night CBS Evening News brought forth another gloom and doom story about Social Security. Like others from the network that havecome to CJR's attention, this one sent a similar message: Social Security is in big trouble, a debatable point. And like those other stories, this one mis-characterizes the system and omits important context that leaves viewers at the mercy of political elites who are shaping the acceptable fixes for the program.
  After introducing the attention-grabbing anecdote'--around one John Altobello, a kitchen remodeler in New Orleans, who believes the system is deeply troubled'--the report dives right in to the oft-repeated canard about the declining ratio of workers to retirees as the culprit-in-chief for Social Security's impending shortfall. CBS reported that in 1945, 42 workers paid into the system for every retiree. By 2033, there will be fewer than two. ''Social Security could fall 25 cents short for every dollar it owes in benefits,'' viewers learned. Scary stuff indeed!
  If there's one thing I know from my years in the newspaper business, it's that most reporters are very, very bad at math. But don't worry, lobbyists and politicians are always waiting with selective information to fill in the gap!
  CBS apparently missed the warning that Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue gave the press last spring, cautioning them on how to describe Social Security's financial condition, and noting that though the system will eventually need a fiscal re-adjustment, the system is OK for the next 21 years.
  ''After 2033'--even if Congress does nothing'--there will still be sufficient assets to pay about 75 percent of the current level of benefits. That's not acceptable, but it's still a fact that there will still be sufficient assets there,'' Astrue told reporters.
  CBS also missed the chance to offer viewers a clear'--and accurate'--picture of what the declining worker ratio actually means. For the last 40 years or so the ratio of workers to retirees has been about three to one, explained Nancy Altman, co-director of the advocacy group Social Security Works. ''Actuaries and all experts understood that, with the aging of the baby boom and increases in longevity, the ratio would start to decline, and that was taken into account.''
  No less a figure in Social Security's history Robert Ball, who served as commissioner for 11 years, wrote a few years before his death in 2008:
  Social Security faces an eminently avoidable long-range funding shortfall, not an inevitable collapse brought about by unmanageable changes in the historic ratio of workers to beneficiaries. Those who advance that argument are using an accurate statistic to make a highly inaccurate charge.
  Instead of discussing all this, CBS relied on the kitchen remodeler from New Orleans to advance its narrative about the program's money troubles. Altobello, we learned, has so much money saved for retirement he doesn't have to count on Social Security. ''All indications are it's going to run out of money,'' he said. ''Maybe not in the near future but it's coming up fairly close. In my retirement, in my lifetime, it'll end.'' Really? Maybe CBS thinks Altobello knows something the Social Security commissioner doesn't.
  Altobello also told us that he worries that his sons and younger workers will never see a nickel, a popular view among the public'--partly due to poor journalism on the topic. CBS correspondent Mark Strassman had the last word: ''The federal retirement program must change,'' he opined. ''Though no one can be sure exactly how to make it rock solid.''
  Nope, nobody. Nobody except the people like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Nancy Altman, Eric Kingson, Dean Baker and Paul Krugman, just to mention a few.
Obama's Father Confessor
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:04
  The problem with Barack Obama is lack of intelligence and the problem with Obama voters is they have no intelligence.
  In the ANALGATE criminal fiasco of the Obama regime broken here, there is a stunning reality in Obama turned to an idiot to be his father confessor after the debate.
  The idiot's name is Kerry Ladka. This is the guy who asked the question about the anal rape and started the Candy Crowley Candygate as was broken here.
  I will post the Washington Post's post on it , and it is beyond odd, because Obama lied in his answer in public and then for some reason had to rush over to this Ladka and start "confessing" things.
  The rationale for the delay, Obama explained to Ladka, was to make sure that the ''intelligence he was acting on was real intelligence and not disinformation,'' recalls Ladka.As to Ladka's question about who turned down the Benghazi security requests and why, Obama reportedly told him that ''releasing the individual names of anyone in the State Department would really put them at risk,'' Ladka says.
  Alright as Ladka and propagandist Erik Wemple (no comment on that name), seem to be not involved in intelligence either.One would ask what was Obama "acting on"? Was it a millions more in bribes to Egypt to hush them up? Was it instructing Eric Holder to go arrest the front man for the at YouTube video? Yes Obama did nab one person in this and it was someone in America, while the rest of culprits have gone free....except those who double crossed Obama in this, and it was some other group who capped them.
  Think of this in psychological terms. Obama and Candy Crowley worked out a plan to politically murder Mitt Romney over this question in a criminal act of electioneering.
  Obama lies to the world with his answer, and yet has to go over and try to be loved by this father confessor as Obama fabricates that he was "doing something".
  For the reality, the Americans were all dead, so it was not like anything was going to happen in any of this. If Obama had not plumed the other embassies to be invaded for his campaign intimidation against Christians, no one would have been in jeopardy.
  As this expanded in the private 2 minute quicky between Obama and Ladke, his answer about not answering was about concern over who turned down the security request as it could put them at risk.
  What the hell does that mean? Homosexuals are going to track the person down and murder them? Are the families going to beat the person to a pulp? What risk does a State Department official have in America?
  Hell if Obama released the guys name Muslims probably would give them 70 virgins for all the help he gave them in retaliating on Obama policy which screwed the "bad" terrorists. The reality is this person made Egypt a hell of a big bribe.
  So as one examines what Obama was lying about in par dux, it makes one more interested in the kind of psychopathy which is driving Obama.
  Obama uses the dead Americans to set a trap for Romney with Candy Crowley and jokes about it in asking Crowley to repeat what she said in helping him.......and the Obama voters there laugh and cheer.
  Great respect for the dead.
  Obama then lies again, about what he was doing.....and you will notice that this blow fly eye Obama really enjoys being around caskets with dead in them.......as he mentioned the event twice.Just as creepy as Muchelle clapping and jeering they are going to party in November. She was also earlier at an event slathering over the corpse of dead bin Laden that "we" got.Very macabre the Obama's, but it appears only Barry Chin seeks out people to confess things to which are only lies, and that makes one wonder the reality Obama actually resides in.
  What actions did Obama take? None. His only response was to have Libya deal with bringing these terrorists employees of Obama to "justice".The reality is the evidence that while Obama dithered on this in not securing these terrorists for "justice" he left them to be executed....so someone should ask Mr. Obama in the World Court what is the indictment for vigilante justice when it is covering up your original hostage taking crimes.
  Barack Hussein Obama's personality appears to be splitting. He has all of these lies and piles of dead bodies, hate for Mitt Romney, and in this he has to find a stranger to go confess things to which are important to Obama.....which of course make absolutely no sense, unless of course one is a sociopath.
  To review this, Obama did not define these acts as terrorism, because he was supposedly waiting to see if the information was correct he was acting on, but has not done anything for weeks.This must be the reason Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood's mass murder has not been brought to court nor defined as a terrorist as Obama is still waiting to see if the information was correct so he can act....perhaps Sheik bin Laden's corpse was at Fort Hood and poor Nidal was just an innocent spraying bullets about.
  Then we have that endangered State Department official who Obama is protecting not from Muslims, but from Americans of some sort as apparently all Americans are terrorists.........but Hillary Clinton is quite safe in saying the buck stops with her in taking the blame for it.
  Look, you can figure out in a few clicks of a mouse as to who is employed at State and does this security review. Chris Stevens was begging for security for a very long time. He was just in DC at that powerful GOP Senator from Oklahoma's office and he said nothing about security to him to help cut the red tape.The security issue came from the White House, no matter what Hillary Clinton is covering up......in which she will be rewarded later as she too is blackmailing Obama over this.
  Analgate has been proven to be exactly what it was. The hostage taking by Barack Obama with his good terrorists for his 2012 election theft, whereby Obama would threaten Christians over that YouTube from voting for Romney in his wilding.Obama's bad terrorists got involved and murdered 4 Americans and Obama was busy for weeks covering up the crimes he committed with more murders.
  This is weighing heavy on Obama, unless he is with his Crowley puppy press in figuring out ways to politically assassinate his opponent, he hates in Mitt Romney. Then Obama of the casket vacation he seems to enjoy seeing come to America, makes jokes about it all and has his Obamaniacs cheering and laughing as he speaks about it all as Muchelle leads them all clapping.
  Barack Obama having to confess to someone, reveals he is deeply troubled over his public lies and is begging for forgiveness over his new lies to this Ladka, as he is telling such idiotic things they are begging to be exposed for the contemptuous things they are.
  It is like his Birther forgeries in Obama can not enjoy that enough, that he has to go out and kill bin Laden's corpse and lie about it in the DNA, but instead of ending it there, he gets blackmailed by Islamocommunists and TEAM SIX is whacked to even the score, until of course Benghazi comes along.
  Then Obama is allured again to the families to cry with them over his sins, as he pretends it is about the dead........same dead in the families he sends form letters to and they are in limbo waiting for Obama to give them some answers.
  Barack Obama can not tell the Truth. He never can, because he is a liar for his entire existence. It is like he said his single mum raised him.....
  Ah when was this as his real mum in Anna Chin dumped in for a plane ticket to the Philippines to get away from B. Hussein crawling her bones and not getting the sperm job done.Then Stan Ann lived with her parents and was off to school so there was no lone single mum there......she married Lolo so no single mum there ....and then she dumped the kid back onto the grandparents with no single mum there.
  Obama makes up whopper lies all the time just like Dreams. It is what this sociopath does, enjoys it in getting away with it, and then has to find someone to confess to with more lies.
  I do not know where Muslims like B. Hussein Obama Osseiran go to confess their sins, as mullahs just tell them they are all going to hell. Obama has no Jeremiah Wright and apparently only uses Farrakahn to to intimidate white liberal reporters and Al Franken for hoodie marches. That leaves apparently strangers who prime the Obama lies well to have him gush forth with more whoppers of actually what Obama has concocted in his sociopathic nature.
  First: I really was trying to find the Truth in Benghazi, but could not find it as I had to figure out what lies others were telling me.
  Second, I really was protecting people at the State Department in not revealing who denied the security.
  The Truth in Benghazi is ANALGATE. Obama denied security with Hillary Clinton's help, so that Obama could get Chris Stevens gay parade held hostage so Obama could go on stage with Mitt Romney and piss on him as Obama terrorized Christians who are the real terrorists according to B. Hussein.
  .
  nuff said.
  agtG 266
Mis hijos de un Mes­as menor
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:03
  Una carta a mis fans latinos e idiotas que votan por Obama y peones.Mis amigos, es el momento en este problema de Obama en estar detrs en las elecciones, para que usted pueda hacerle pagar.No he recibido nada de Sr. Obama para sus votos, salvo lesbianas juez en el Tribunal Supremo y recibir un disparo por Eric Holder en rapido y furioso.Es esclavos y es hora de que usted se libera y lo hago por ti de la manera que no hay otros representantes jams sern.Me refiero a emancipar le y hacerlo de una manera capitalista de usted hacer algo de dinero fuera de esto.Mire Sr. Obama en ANALGATE.Los egipcios estn chantajeando (C)l por medio de un billioin d"lares.Ya es hora de mis beaners que conseguir algo de dinero para su ilegal votaci"n demasiado.Digo poner sus votos ahora para Obama o Romney y quien viene a trav(C)s con la mejor oferta es la que votas para.Como su representante, le dir(C) lo que pida y es el 500 millones recibidos de los egipcios.Tomar ese dinero y comprar hasta el norte de M(C)xico de invitar a militares en proteger a usted y usted configurar su propio mexicano propiedad del estado en las tradiciones mexicoamericanas de Estados Unidos.A continuaci"n usted atraer todo tipo de industrias y bancos estadounidenses por no cargarlas impuestos y utilizndolos para el empleo de los 40 millones de ustedes.Es un ganar ganar para usted mis beaners! Honestamente, necesita alguien que mirarte despu(C)s, como la regla de las mujeres en esos grandes pechos que tienen y es tan poco hombres.Voy a ser su l­der ben(C)volo como no eres lo suficientemente valiente para apoderarse de M(C)xico desde el socialista blanco espa±oles que gobiernan en la ciudad de M(C)xico y luego hay la droga Obama los l­deres de la mafia que se utilizan para suprimir su pimienta comiendo en las zonas pobres.Cuando las cosas se hacen malas en Am(C)rica, se ver obligado a huir como de la familia de Mitt Romney y usted no tendr nada.Es mejor hacer un acuerdo pol­tico ahora antes de las elecciones y trabajar el plan que te doy.Necesita alguien para manejar las cosas y plan para usted.Voy a ser tu Padre y ser(C)is mis hijos.Por supuesto necesito cortar un diez por ciento de todo para este trabajo y en esto que obedecer como te gusta fuerte maestros decidir las cosas para usted.Es la forma con el ganado en te alimentar, refugio, decidir las cosas para usted y ofrecer todas sus necesidades y en cambio le funciona, su mujer ser feliz y grasa y usted ser grasa y feliz, pretendiendo que no es cobardes, que es mejor que ser delgada y miedo ahora. Ser bueno para todos ustedes, como no voy a tener sexo con su mujer y si se intenta tener relaciones sexuales conmigo, Castro le y le cuelgue.No tendrs que darme todos sus salarios como los sacerdotes requieren en los ºltimos a±os y voy a ser un Don que cuide de usted y todos ustedes hacen feliz.Usted aunque vaya a la Iglesia, comer sus pimientos y mostrar respeto por los norteamericanos al norte del Rio Grande.Le ense±ar en este c"mo ser honesto, pr"spero, feliz y responsable en ser liberan, y no este esclavo que clase de los patricios estadounidenses han comprado por los espa±oles blancos.Es tiempo, 5000 a±os literalmente, que han sido peones y es hora que evolucion" y creci" para ser ms trabajadores para los ricos con su ºnica recompensa siendo sexo con su grasas esposas y maridos flacos.El primer paso en esta exigiendo dinero para esto de Obama su voto y luego a casa a M(C)xico, comprando propiedad all­ y pidiendo a las fuerzas armadas estadounidenses vengan y protegerlo.Una vez hecho esto, invitan en todos aquellos financistas y empresarios a no pagar impuestos, y tiene sus buenos trabajos en el hogar.Este es tu futuro y time is running out mis beaners.Debe realizar esta operaci"n antes de las elecciones o acabar con la nada como el inicia de Estados Unidos implosi"n debido a sus votos de Obama.Entiendo que es gente estºpida, como eres perezoso en no querer decidir cosas o plan para el futuro.Yo hacer esto para usted y quizs incluso nombrar a alguien para que usted pueda inclinarse para Arnold Schwartzenegger como (C)l est desempleado pretendiendo que es profesor o algo en California.No ser­a divertido tener el terminador como regente sobre vosotros y tal vez tendr(C) Summer Glau venga y ltigo realizar cada uno de ustedes comportarse, ella fue un gran Terminator demasiado.Por lo que es el requisito de mi ni±ez mexicana.Marcha por la Mitt Romney que Barack Obama llegar a medio millones de soborno del d"lar, que wil llevar a casa y comprar hasta el norte de M(C)xico para sus hogares. Usted debe actuar ahora antes de perder su poder de negociaci"n y volver a ser peones de nuevo por otros 500 a±os.Ir rpidamente a mis hijos y para ello. Post Script si algunos Ginsu habla franc(C)s se queja de este sonido de la letra como si fuera una traducci"n en l­nea para tratar de demostrar que ella puede hablar franc(C)s, ignora ella busca hombres frotar su vulva en tratar de ser un hombre, y no quiere mis hijos corrompidos por algunos Ginsu frotando sus partes femeninas sobre las piernas.
A New NATO Mission (IT Version)
  Link to Article
  Source: DVIDS Unit RSS Feed: Natochannel
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:03
  Choose quality '–¼Embed code '–¼<iframe width="500" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none; overflow: hidden; width: 500px; height: 300px;" allowtransparency="true" src="http://www.dvidshub.net/video/embed/158845"></iframe>
  NATO Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen travelled with ambassadors from the North Atlantic Council to meet Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, in Kabul. A new training mission was announced to start in 2015, after Afghan forces have taken full security responsibility. Produced by Ruth Owen, Kabul, Herat, Mazar e Sharif, Afghanistan. Also available in High Definition.
Negative Amanda Todd post costs man his job - Calgary
  Link to Article
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 11:07
  A man who posted negative comments about the death of Amanda Todd was fired from his job after an Airdrie, Alta., woman alerted his employer.
  Todd is the 15-year-old who killed herself last week after suffering years of bullying. Many online memorial sites have popped up in response to her death, and thousands of people have posted comments on them.
  Christine Claveau was looking at a site when she saw what she thought was a particularly hateful anonymous post.
  Facebook memorial sites for Amanda Todd have popped up all over the country and thousands of people have posted to them.(Facebook)She said the comment read, "It's about time this bitch died."
  Claveau said she tracked down the identity of the sender in Toronto and forwarded a note to his employer, the retail store Mr. Big and Tall.
  The man was fired.
  "We are deeply saddened by the loss of Amanda Todd," said Dave McGregor, president and CEO of Grafton-Fraser Inc. which operates the retail chain, in response to a query from CBC News.
  "Out of respect for the family, I decided not to comment further on this situation beyond our statement that we took the action we felt to be appropriate. I will tell you that the individual in question is no longer employed with our company."
  McGregor said the company's ethics are based on tolerance, respect and fair and honourable treatment of all individuals, internally, with customers and the population as a whole.
  "We have zero tolerance for the mistreatment of others no matter what form it takes," he said. "We feel that the focus should remain on the issue at hand, which is bullying and how we work together to stop it. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Todd family."
  Mixed reaction online"I'm glad that they fired him and they took such a strong stance against bullying," said Claveau.
  "But I just think that even having him reprimanded or having the embarrassment of his company knowing what he did is what I was aiming for, just to say '... you know what you do in your pastime can affect who you are at work and your personal life too."
  Claveau said she has received a lot of response to what happened '-- most of it positive but some of it negative.
  "You can't please everybody, so I'm getting a lot of people saying I was the bully in the matter, or it wasn't right to contact his employer. So I'm getting a little bit of negative backlash."
  Claveau said so-called "internet trolls" must be held accountable for what they say and do online.
  "Trolls" are people who anonymously post negative comments on the internet to elicit a reaction.
  She said she's more encouraged than ever now to monitor the internet and "out" those behind hateful statements.
  Claveau has started a group of concerned moms who plan to continue alerting authorities to cyberbullying taking place online.
BBC News - Mitt Romney: Obama has 'no agenda' for second term
  Link to Article
  Sat, 20 Oct 2012 04:07
  19 October 2012Last updated at22:24 ETPlease turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
  Mitt Romney spoke in Florida days before the final presidential debate in Boca Raton
  Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has derided US President Barack Obama, saying his rival has "no agenda" worthy of a second term in office.
  At a campaign rally in Florida, he said the Obama campaign had been "reduced to petty attacks and silly word games".
  Hours earlier, Mr Obama decried Mr Romney for shifting his positions as election day draws nearer, saying the Republican suffers from "Romnesia".
  The two meet for their final debate, on foreign policy, in Florida on Monday.
  Mr Romney and the Republicans are continuing to focus on the Obama administration's handling of a deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans including the US ambassador were killed.
  The incident provoked a flashpoint during Tuesday's second debate, and is likely to be hotly debated again in Boca Raton.
  'Romnesia'Friday's campaigning saw both candidates make one major stop each: Mr Obama in the Washington DC suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, and Mr Romney in Daytona Beach, Florida.
  Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
  Obama: 'You might have a case of Romnesia'
  Mr Obama told supporters that Mitt Romney was now only becoming more moderate as the election got closer.
  "He is forgetting what his own positions are and he is betting that you are too," Mr Obama said, giving his rival's "condition" a crowd-pleasing name: "Romnesia".
  The president renewed his pitch to women voters, arguing that "you don't want someone who needs to ask for binders full of women," a reference to Mr Romney's description of how he recruited women for cabinet positions as governor of Massachusetts.
  "You want a president who's already appointed two unbelievable women to the Supreme Court of the United States."
  Former president Bill Clinton also campaigned for Mr Obama on Friday in Wisconsin.
  Mr Romney, appearing later on stage with running mate Paul Ryan, described the Obama campaign as "the incredible shrinking campaign".
  "Have you been watching the Obama campaign lately?" Mr Romney told supporters at the Dayton Beach bandshell. "They have no agenda for the future, no agenda for America, no agenda for a second term. It's a good thing they won't have a second term."
  Mr Romney said the Obama campaign had been "reduced to petty attacks and silly word games".
  Continue reading the main storyhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19997718
  Tightening raceRecent polls show an ever-tightening race, including in key election states.
  A CNN poll on Friday suggested Mr Romney has a slender 1% lead in Florida, within the poll's margin of error. A separate poll gave a similar edge to Mr Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire.
  Both candidates are also trying to gain as many votes as possible through early voting, already under way in many states across the US. Election day itself is Tuesday 6 November.
  With the election now less than three weeks away, newspapers are beginning to hand out their endorsements. On Friday, Mr Obama won the endorsement of the Salt Lake Tribune - despite the city being home to Mr Romney's Mormon faith.
  Elsewhere, The Tennessean, which often endorses Democratic candidates for president, chose Mr Romney.
  It was also reported on Friday that seven of the key "swing states" in the US election had seen their unemployment figures over the past 12 months.
Mein Kinder Obama
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:38
  I was looking at the cover of a tabloid in the grocery and the two Obama cherubs were on the cover in Queenie and Sloven, and that youngest one is going to be someone who will have to rely on her intelligence in life as I doubt Playboy is going to be offering her any spreads when she comes of age to make up for bad book writing like Patti Reagan.That is a pity in both the Obama daughters just did not inherit any of their parents beauty, in fact neither one looks a thing like Barack Obama or Barry Chin.......
  The thing is it costs 70,000 dollars per year to send these cherubs to private school in DC. That is a chunk of change, even for an Obama who makes a lump off the taxpayers, and will be on the taxpayer welfare dole for the next 20 years at least, costing tens of millions of more dollars in upkeeping B. Hussein and the Mrs.That is quite a price for history and keeping a multi millionaire in cherry pie until the presidential library has an occupant.
  You know that the Obama cherubs private school was cracked down on in a drug bust right? Yes sir, right in Obamaland DC all the rich kids were running a dope ring for all the other rich kids.You also know like in your neighborhoods how that damn dope dealer never seems to get arrested, and the others do? You know it is because just like in the big game, there are dope dealers who pay kickbacks to the police and those who do not and are arrested.So in the cherub school, you had apparently some rich kids who thought the could sell dope without giving a cut to the local constabulary, and of course those who did started bitching, and in the end, you had a dope bust, and the Young and Wonder cherbs, I mean the Obama cherubs were in a school which has been exposed as dope central in DC.No need to go downtown where the niggers pedal it, as in DC's upper crust, you just find it in the finer places where the blacks of affirmative action have suitcases of the stuff like Marion Barry snorting it by the kilo like Bill Clinton used to.
  You do know that Obama gets a cut out of the global dope trade right? He set this up in 2008 or his benefactors did in a George H. W. Bush Paris type deal with the Iranians for the hostages in which Bill Casey was reaming Jimmy Carter hard over that issue.Obama was in South America or his people were in promising he would be in the White House. Obama knew this due to his flipping 10 million votes from John McCain. What the deal was in North America was simple in the coke run by the NarcoMarxists of South America was to be flown out to west Africa. That is why Obama was parading around west Africa early on and not Kenya, as it was this dope deal stuff, which was to be distributed into Europe, via al Qaeda's fleet of 727's they were operating there.
  That French plane which was downed off of Brazil was part of this in Sarkozy was grousing about it, and the terrorists downed a plane to get him to accept the deal.
  This then cut out the British who were squealing about it, as the narcotics were flowing from Africa into the Balkans, all with Russian mafia oversight. That is why Obama was reshuffling all of this with Putin, as it was about deals on a wide range of flexible subjects.Deals changed though as the Spanish became the western pipeline and Obama started blowing up the Muslim nations to pay off that 300 million counterfeit donation to his 2008 election theft. Main point is though, the pay off that Obama got out of this was no terrorists really pulling any 9 11 events off in America to make Obama look Muslim bad, in exchange for their running the dope trade.
  Figure it out, al Qaeda running dope, addicts them to money, and al Qaeda with the Muslim Brohood running nations Obama puts them in charge of like Libya, and they tend to behave for Obama in the short term, except of anal raping a sodomite Chris Stevens which Obama sent in to be kidnapped so Obama could "rescue" him, but it was a bad deal, as the terrorists want more than Obama can give or promise to murder them with.
  So just like Obama is the mahdifather of al Qaeda running them out of 1600 Penn Avenue. The real dope dealer at the Obama children's school is B. Hussein Obama, in that dope trade Obama oversees.
  My children, just like Obama did not call for any investigation into the murders of the Americans in Libya, AS ONLY THIS BLOG REPORTED, like he never sent in investigators into Poland for their Government mass murder by Putin, you will probably notice now in this blog making you look smart in there have been absolutely NO major drug seizures by Obama and his BATF.....and you will notice with all that Eric Holder surveillance on international banking in finding all sorts of cash flows by Americans, that there has not been one bank investigated in Europe, Asia or America for this massive flow of drug money.
  You know that Afghanistan is overflowing with opium trade under Obama. What do you think they are dealing in camels for payments? You know it is record amounts of cash, the same cash after the bust in 2008 that Europeans reported their only banks which were solvent WHERE THE ONES DOING DOPE TRADE IN BLACK MARKET ACCOUNTS.
  Read that again and project it out in Obama and Holder know very well where money is flowing, but have not in one case found one dollar or one bank in this world laundering money. That Salah Osseiran who is in America and Europe using front companies and getting money from Lebanese investors, is as free to buy up things as all of these banks are in Obamaland to launder these record profits in drug moneys.
  Yes trillions of dollars worldwide in contraband trade flowing through banks, and Barack Obama can not find one instance of any of this taking place, as there has not been one major arrest in any of this since Obama has taken charge.........well at least there was an arrest at the Obama cherub private school, but then that was a deal that DC security was not getting their cut in these folks were cutting in on the territory of the established drug dealers for the cartel.
  When Adolf Hitler sowed the seeds for the Muslim Egyptian Banna Nazi, he was speaking of a 3rd Reich, but the amazing thing is, the reality is the Muslim Nazi in their national socialists have been the visible wing of the Hitler successes as his Paperclip refugees guided the world for the past generation.Yes Barack Obama is all the things Adolf Hitler despised as Obama is Marxist and not National Socialist, but a hybrid of the two, but Barry Chin is the international child of all of the worst of the world in the Sugarland breeding program in the embodiment of his Asian roots as Barry Chin in Peking girls, his Bolshevism of a Putincrat buddy, and his Berliner Karl Marx dogma, all hybridized in the Islamocommunists who his real soulmates are in the Iranian communists.
  Barack Obama is the Islamic merchant of the Osseirans in reality, it is his caste. He sits upon the greatest of accomplishments in world history in using American debt in the trillions to restore the NeoRoman Empire in the west, the Caliphate in the center and the New Asian Order in the east. All enforced with his terrorists of al Qaeda, managed by the Muslim Brotherhood, with financiers in Berlin, intelligence in Moscow and slave labor in China.
  Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Banna had no idea the syndicate they would spawn would be this united under one Obama bastard, in all these world systems would be brought to their altars from a desk at 1600 Penn Avenue.
  There are not many men who can sit down with their cherubs at dinner and on hearing their day of a narcotic bust at school, muse to themselves and say, "Yes my cherubs, I was protecting your inheritance in every dime bag matters in paying off al Qaeda and FARC".
  Mein Kinder Obama
  agtG 234
Democrat Collin Peterson Hates You
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 12:36
  These fraud Democrats.........oh and Collin Peterson of Minnesota can thank Barack Obama's nut followers for signing me up in impersonating me in Minnesota for this expose' on the fraud of Collin Peterson.He was caught recently in a sting in which a little girl asked him about his support for Obamacare and aborticide. Petersen spouted off at a Democrat event that "it was those people" and called Right to Life people "EXTREMISTS' and the organization which was defending women's rights was now "finished" as apparently Petersen is some Gestapo agent who can destroy all groups and people who do not bow to him.
  Odd things in the Minnesota Right to Life group actually supported Petersen for 20 years which was apparently fine, but now that they have withdrawn support for this fraud, they are all now subhuman extremists who will be aborted by Petersen out of the womb.
  Peterson like all Democrats has been lying to people across America for 20 years. This is one of the "I don't support Obamacare" as he could lie about it like Stephie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, and when it comes time to repeal it.......why Petersen is busy stating he will not vote to remove it when that is what his central Minnesota district demands.
  Petersen is quite cocky about his threats against Americans for Life, as he stated that only NPR was running his scorched earth diatribe and "those people do not listen to NPR.Yes, Americans from his rural district are apparently too stupid to listen to NPR....probably just watching old Hee Haw reruns.
  There is not much to add about this fraud who is now for Obama threatening Americans with their end.......as they will be finished apparently for withdrawing support of this Obama supporter.
  What is to add is Lee Byberg, a staunch Patriotic American is the Republican after Ronald Reagan's own heart who is the only choice in this Minnesota race for the resurrection of America.
  Think of it, a Democrat from Obama Minnesota's Al Franken's election theft state, has just referred to Americans as extremists, and that they will be finished for challenging him.
  Sounds like death threats and it is all on a YouTube video.
  Where is the press on this?
  agtG
  News - BE Part of the Movement | Lee Byberg for Congress - 2012bybergforcongress.com/category/media/Collin Peterson Loses Pro-Life Endorsement. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE '' Contact: Lee Byberg (320-905-3095) WILLMAR, MN '-- Collin Peterson has been able to count on the ... 244-185 to repeal the unpopular law, with 5 Democrats joining the Republicans ... continue reading ... Facebook; Twitter; Youtube; Email; Rss ...
Tinfoil hat crowd: Bain stealing election with tainted machines
  Link to Article
  Source: Twitchy » US Politics
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:39
  The conspiracy-theorist fringe of the American left has found yet another ghost to chase after. This time, the boogeymen are a bunch of voting machines owned by a company partially owned by another company where a small minority of the partners and directors are ex-Bain employees and Romney bundlers.
  Tagg Romney's equity fund (Solamere Capital) is invested in another investment firm, which invests in the company that owns voting machines.
  What's more, almost all of the partners and directors of the voting machine company are '-- gasp! '-- white men.
  These eeeeeevil machines are now apparently being programmed to mis-tabulate our votes and foist Mitt Romney upon an unwilling electorate. This is the video that started the madness:
  Yeah, we're not buying it either. The best part is that, if our fresh-faced conspiracy reporter has his facts right, the supposedly dirty investors weren't even Bain Capital people. Listen carefully to this dude explaining the grand conspiracy. He self-corrects to say that the evil overlords worked at Bain and Company. That's not Bain Capital. It's the company that Bain Capital spun off of in 1984. Mitt Romney was never CEO of Bain and Company. He worked there in the late '70s and early '80s and then left to start Bain Capital. So, this is the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon of conspiracy theories.
  Still, that doesn't mean there aren't a ton of people falling for it:
  Oh, and here's our personal favorite:
  So the idea is to solve perceived disenfranchisement with purposeful mass disenfranchisement? Brilliant!
  Like this:Be the first to like this.
British engineers produce amazing 'petrol from air' technology
  Link to Article
  Source: Interesting News Items
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:37
The elephant in the chat room: will international students stay at home?
  Link to Article
  Source: The Conversation
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:36
  With free, quality online education from brand-name universities, will overseas students come to Australia? Elephant image from www.shutterstock.comFUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today, Wollongong University's Thomas Birtchnell looks at what online education will mean for the international student market.
  In 1923, a young boy leaves his small village in India and travels by boat to study at Columbia University in the United States.
  This is a time when only five out of every hundred of India's three hundred million people can read and write. His story, featured in a Boy Scouts' magazine, was billed as ''The Boy Who Would Educate India''. He would return to India with his degree to ''teach the people something besides religion'' and put India on the path to development.
  The aim of the feature was to be an inspirational story for young Americans '' they, too, should strive for an education and help others.
  The Boy Who Would Educate India. Boy Scout Magazine, 1923
  But not all goes to plan. His job at as a messenger boy at the Western Union falls through (most likely due to visa issues). In order to complete his degree, he takes up an informal job as a carer for a wealthy family's children. And his own family need him back in India.
  Unable to balance his lowly job with his study, he makes the long trip home without his doctorate, scrubbing the decks to pay for his passage.
  This story will seem somewhat familiar for many international students from India today, who come to Australia expecting to earn a degree, find a secure job and eventually to apply for residency. This is the dream of a better life through mobility.
  But in many cases they find themselves balancing study with poor work and living conditions and, once their degree is finished, they are told to head back home.
  But does the arrival of free quality online education change all this? Had ''The Boy Who Would Educate India'' been a student today, would he have still made the journey?
  Study Without MovingNew technologies are making their way into the global education system and may challenge the way universities operate.
  Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), for example, offer expert tuition from the world's most prestigious universities for free '-- Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and now Melbourne to name a few.
  Most seriously for education exporters, these new technologies appear to threaten the lucrative international student market, now a considerable slice of universities' incomes. The market for Indian students alone is worth over $3 billion to the US, and was expected to grow exponentially alongside aspirant middle classes.
  With MOOCs, rich students from poor regions can earn degrees from premier providers from the ''comfort'' of their own homes. In the future they may even interact with others through iPad Doubles (see video below). But at the moment this interaction mostly occurs in chatrooms and quizzes.
  Face-to-face tuition could become a luxury commodity. University senior executives and policymakers need to consider this conundrum in how to target infrastructure, tuition, graduate placement, student experience and '-- much less publicised '-- pathways to residency.
  A Better Life Through MobilityThere is a very good reason universities and policymakers are so far unfazed by MOOCs. They recognise that for international students the fantasy of self-betterment through a combination of learning and mobility is what motivates them to study abroad.
  Australian University Games advertisement for international students.
  Universities are well aware of how much the dream of migration means to international students. They make significant investments in global road shows, which trumpet residency pathways, exchange programs and visa sponsorship deals in order to attract enrolments.
  Indeed, research shows that up to three quarters of the Indian students coming to Australia successfully apply for permanent residency afterwards. Studying in Australia is seen by many as a way to get a residency outside India.
  The show goes on despite domestic pressure on incorrect visas, overstayers, visa scams and dodgy colleges and agents. More worryingly, behind the scenes are exploitative ''bodyshops''.
  The issue here is that the dreams of students for a better life through mobility diverge considerably from the dreams of education providers. They want students they can enrol, educate, award and then wave off at the airport. But these students do not just want a quick degree and a short working holiday.
  Hard TruthsStudents often move internationally to escape the hard realities of life in countries such as India. Many are simply seeking amelioration in places with less poverty, greater job prospects, low corruption, better infrastructure, more safety and a higher Human Development Index.
  Universities and policymakers dream of knowledge customers buying their prestigious degrees online in a global market divorced from migration. MOOCs seem to be progress in this direction. But for international students MOOCs is a non-issue.
  The elephant in the (chat) room is that most international students pay exorbitant fees, undergo complex administration processes, live in austere conditions and satisfy local business demand for poorly regulated informal labour in the dream of a better life. Both the needs of students and providers demand critical thought in debating the future of education.
  The series will conclude on Monday with a panel discussion in Canberra co-hosted with the Office for Learning and Teaching and involving the Minister for Tertiary Education, Chris Evans.
  We'd love you to take part: leave your comments, join the discussion on twitter.com/conversationEDU, facebook.com/conversationEDU.
  This is part fourteen of our series on the Future of Higher Education. You can read other instalments by clicking the links below:
  Part one: Online opportunities: digital innovation or death through regulation?, Jane Den Hollander
  Part two: MOOCs and exercise bikes '' more in common than you'd think, Phillip Dawson & Robert Nelson
  Part three: How Australian universities can play in the MOOCs market, David Sadler
  Part four: MOOC and you're out of a job: uni business models in danger, Mark Gregory
  Part five: Radical rethink: how to design university courses in the online, Paul Wappett
  Part six: Online education: can we bridge the digital divide?, Tim Pitman
  Part seven: Online learning will change universities by degrees, Margaret Gardner
  Part eight: The university campus of the future: what will it look like?, David Lamond
  Part nine: Deadset? MOOCs and Australian education in a globalised world, Ruth Morgan
  Part ten: Research online: why universities need to be knowledge brokers, Justin O'Brien
  Part eleven: Online education at the coalface: what academics need to know, Rod Lamberts & Will Grant
  Part twelve: A little bit more conversation: the limits of online education, Shirley Alexander
  Part thirteen: What students want and how universities are getting it wrong, Alasdair McAndrew
  Post a CommentTagsHigher education, International students, Online education, Massive Open Online Courses, Future of Higher Education
  Related articles 19 October 2012 The university experience '--then and now 19 October 2012 What students want and how universities are getting it wrong 18 October 2012 A little bit more conversation: the limits of online education 18 October 2012 Online education at the coalface: what academics need to know 17 October 2012 Research online: why universities need to be knowledge brokers
Gallup vs. the World
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:33
  Our regularly scheduled forecast update for Wednesday slipped through the cracks. The FiveThirtyEight forecast was not much changed based on Wednesday's polls, however, with Barack Obama's chances of winning the Electoral College increasing incrementally to 65.7 percent from 64.8 percent.
  We'll catch up with Thursday's polls with the next update. In the meantime, I'm going to focus on one particular survey, the Gallup national tracking poll.
  The Gallup national tracking poll now shows a very strong lead for Mitt Romney. As of Wednesday, he was ahead by six points among likely voters. Mr. Romney's advantage grew further, to seven points, when Gallup updated its numbers on Thursday afternoon.
  The Gallup poll is accounted for in the forecast model, along with all other state and national surveys.
  However, its results are deeply inconsistent with the results that other polling firms are showing in the presidential race, and the Gallup poll has a history of performing very poorly when that is the case.
  Other national polls show a race that is roughly tied on average, while state polls continue to indicate a narrow advantage of about two points for President Obama in tipping-point states like Ohio. The forecast has Mr. Obama as a narrow favorite in the election largely on the basis of the state polls. (You can read my thoughts here on the challenge of reconciling state and national poll data.)
  Our database contains records from 136 distinct pollsters that have released at least one state or national survey at some point in this election cycle. Of those, 53 are active enough to have issued at least one survey since Oct. 1.
  With so much data to sort through, it will usually be a counterproductive use of one's time to get overly attached to the results of any one particular poll. Whether you look at the relatively simple averaging methods used by Web sites like Real Clear Politics, or the more involved techniques in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, the Gallup national tracking poll constitutes a relatively small part of the polling landscape.
  Let me walk you through the rules for how the FiveThirtyEight model weighs the Gallup poll relative to all the other information it accounts for. This explanation will be modestly technical '-- you may want to skip ahead to the next section if you aren't concerned with these details.
  The Role of the Gallup Poll in the FiveThirtyEight Model
  There are two major pieces of information that we're looking to extract from each poll. One is simply the raw number '-- who is ahead or behind? The other is the trend it shows in the race '-- which candidate is gaining or losing ground?
  Different types of polls are relatively more and relatively less useful for these purposes. Because national tracking polls like Gallup are published every day, they are useful for the trend part of the calculation, measuring the change in the race against a constant baseline.
  Each poll receives a weight in the FiveThirtyEight trend-line calculation based on its sample size and its pollster rating. The model accounts for the fact that tracking polls use an overlapping set of interviews. A three-day tracking poll might consist of interviews conducted on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, for instance. When the polling firm issues its next release of the survey, a fresh set of interviews from Thursday will replace the ones from Monday in the sample. Thus, we reduce the weight assigned to each edition of a tracking poll to avoid counting the same interviews multiple times.
  Even so, there are quite a few interviews conducted by a tracking poll over the course of a week '-- about 3,000 per week in the Gallup national tracking poll, for instance.
  But Gallup is not the only national tracking poll. There are six published on most days; the others are from Rasmussen Reports, Ipsos, the RAND Corporation, Investors' Business Daily and United Press International. (A seventh daily tracking poll, from Public Policy Polling, made its debut on Thursday.)
  Of the daily tracking polls, the Gallup survey receives the largest weight in the trend-line calculation. It uses a larger sample size than most other polls, and it has a methodology that includes calls to cellphone voters.
  On the other hand, the pollster ratings are also based in part on past accuracy, and Gallup's performance is middling in that department. It mostly gets a lot of weight by comparison, since the tracking surveys are a mediocre group on the whole.
  The trend-line adjustment also looks at other national polls when they are published, like the New York Times/CBS News or the Wall Street Journal/NBC News surveys. This is a high-quality group of polls; the disadvantage is that they are published only occasionally.
  State polls are also useful for determining the overall trend in the race. In this case, the advantage is the abundance and diversity of data: there might be 10 or 20 state polls published on a typical day, often from 5 or 10 polling firms.
  The trend-line calculation applies a 50 percent penalty to the weight assigned to state polls because trends in any one state could be an aberration. However, the states generally rise and fall together when there is a shift in the national climate '-- and if one candidate makes an especially large gain in one state, it must necessarily be counterbalanced by others in which it is below average.
  The relative amount of weight assigned to each type of poll is fluid rather than fixed, and depends on the overall volume of data. On days when a large number of state polls is published but few national ones, they will generally be the more useful source for making inferences about the trend in the race.
  But on average since Oct. 1, the Gallup national tracking poll has accounted for 12 percent of the information that the model uses to calculate the trend line. The other daily tracking polls, collectively, have accounted for 24 percent of the data, and the occasionally published national polls for 19 percent. Finally, the state polls account for about 45 percent of the data used to calculate the trend-line adjustment.
  Thus, even though the Gallup national tracking poll is more influential than any other individual poll series in the FiveThirtyEight trend-line calculation, it still accounts for only about 12 percent of it. It can very easily be outweighed by the other polls if they are in disagreement with it.
  As I mentioned, however, this is only half the battle. Once ''old'' polls are brought up to date by adjusting them to reflect the current trend in the race, we still need to take some kind of average of them.
  The way the polls are employed to calculate the average is a little different than in calculating the trend line. Our research suggests, for instance, that state polls, rather than national polls, often provide a better estimate of the national popular vote, in addition to the Electoral College.
  In addition, although the trend-line calculation relies fairly heavily on the quantity of polling '-- even a mediocre poll can be useful for measuring how the race is changing if it is published frequently '-- the polling average tends to place more emphasis on the quality of the poll. (Otherwise high-quality polls that are a bit of out-of-date can still have a fair amount of influence on the average. The problem with these polls being less recent is mitigated because the trend-line adjustment serves to make them more contemporary in the event that there has been a significant shift in the race.)
  Over all, the Gallup daily tracking poll accounts for only about 3 percent of the weight in this stage of the calculation. The national tracking polls collectively, including Gallup, account for only about 10 percent of it. Most of the weight, instead, is given to the state polls.
  This is, obviously, a rather detailed answer to the seemingly simple question of how much information is provided by the Gallup national tracking poll, as opposed to all the other state and national surveys.
  Nevertheless, any rigorous attempt to consider the value of the Gallup poll would probably get you to something of the same answer. Perhaps the Gallup poll accounts for 5 or 10 percent of the information that an election analyst should evaluate on a given day.
  The Gallup poll's influence on the subjective perception about where the presidential race stands seems to be proportionately much greater than that, however '-- especially when the poll seems to diverge from the consensus.
  This simply isn't rational, in my view. As I discuss in my book, our first instincts are often quite poor when it comes to weighing information. We tend to put too much emphasis on the newest, most widely reported and most dramatic pieces of data '-- more than is usually warranted.
  Gallup Performs Poorly When Out of Consensus
  Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly.
  You do not need to look any further than Gallup's track record over the past two election cycles to find a demonstration of this.
  In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November's election.
  That was tied for Mr. Obama's largest projected margin of victory among any of the 15 or so national polls that were released just in advance of the election. The average of polls put Mr. Obama up by about seven points.
  The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however.
  In 2010, Gallup put Republicans ahead by 15 points on the national Congressional ballot, higher than other polling firms, which put Republicans an average of eight or nine points ahead instead.
  In fact, Republicans won the popular vote for the United States House by about seven percentage points '-- fairly close to the average of polls, but representing another big miss for Gallup.
  Apart from Gallup's final poll not having been especially accurate in recent years, it has often been a wild ride to get there. Their polls, for whatever reason, have often found implausibly large swings in the race.
  In 2000, for example, Gallup had George W. Bush 16 points ahead among likely voters in polling it conducted in early August. By Sept. 20, about six weeks later, they had Al Gore up by 10 points instead: a 26-point swing toward Mr. Gore over the course of a month and a half. No other polling firm showed a swing remotely that large.
  Then in October 2000, Gallup showed a 14-point swing toward Mr. Bush over the course of a few days, and had him ahead by 13 points on Oct. 27 '-- just 10 days before an election that ended in a virtual tie.
  In 1996, Gallup had Bill Clinton's margin over Bob Dole increasing to 25 points from nine points over the course of four days.
  After the Republican convention in 2008, Gallup had John McCain leading Mr. Obama by as many as 10 points among likely voters. Although some other polls also had Mr. McCain pulling ahead in the race, no other polling firm ever gave him larger than a four-point lead.
  It's not clear what causes such large swings, although Gallup's likely voter model may have something to do with it.
  Even its registered voter numbers can be volatile, however. In early September of this year, after the Democratic convention, Gallup had Mr. Obama's lead among registered voters going from seven points to zero points over the course of a week '-- and then reverting to six points just as quickly. Most other polling firms showed a roughly steady race during this time period.
  Because Gallup's polls usually take large sample sizes, statistical variance alone probably cannot account these sorts of shifts. It seems to be an endemic issue with their methodology.
  To be clear, I would not recommend that you literally just disregard the Gallup poll. You should consider it '-- but consider it in context.
  The context is that its most recent results differ substantially from the dozens of other state and national polls about the campaign. It's much more likely that Gallup is wrong and everyone else is right than the other way around.
Energy Diplomacy in the 21st Century
  Link to Article
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:32
  Thank you. Well, it is wonderful to be back here at Georgetown and in one of the most beautiful venues not only in Washington but anywhere, to have this chance to talk with you about an issue that will definitely shape your futures, and to share with you some thoughts about what that actually means.
  As Dean Lancaster said, I am a Hoya by marriage. (Laughter.) I am so proud to be that, and so grateful for the extraordinary contribution that the School of Foreign Service makes to the State Department. We are enriched every single day, Dean Lancaster, by the work and scholarship that goes on here at this great university.
  So I came here because it's not only that young people have a great stake in our policies at home and abroad about energy, but because we all have to work together to find answers to some of the challenges that it poses. Energy cuts across the entirety of U.S. foreign policy. It's a matter of national security and global stability. It's at the heart of the global economy. It's also an issue of democracy and human rights. And it's been a top concern of mine for years, but certainly these last four years as Secretary of State, and it is sure to be the same for the next Secretary.
  So here today, I want to talk about the vast changes taking place regarding energy worldwide and what they will mean for us. America's objectives for our energy security and our progress in other places is critical, and the steps that we are taking to try to achieve those objectives are ones that I want briefly to outline to you.
  But let me start with the basics. Energy matters to America's foreign policy for three fundamental reasons. First, it rests at the core of geopolitics, because fundamentally, energy is an issue of wealth and power, which means it can be both a source of conflict and cooperation. The United States has an interest in resolving disputes over energy, keeping energy supplies and markets stable through all manner of global crises, ensuring that countries don't use their energy resources or proximity to shipping routes to force others to bend to their will or forgive their bad behavior, and above all, making sure that the American people's access to energy is secure, reliable, affordable, and sustainable.
  Second, energy is essential to how we will power our economy and manage our environment in the 21st century. We therefore have an interest in promoting new technologies and sources of energy '' especially including renewables '' to reduce pollution, to diversify the global energy supply, to create jobs, and to address the very real threat of climate change.
  And third, energy is key to economic development and political stability. And we have an interest in helping the 1.3 billion people worldwide who don't have access to energy. We believe the more they can access power, the better their chances of starting businesses, educating their children, increasing their incomes, joining the global economy '' all of which is good for them and for us. And because corruption is often a factor in energy poverty as well as political instability, we have an interest in supporting leaders who invest their nations' energy wealth back into their economies instead of hoarding it for themselves.
  So these are the issues that I want to talk with you about today. But before I do, I will quickly add that many of you, especially students of history, note that these challenges are not new. Countries have been fighting over resources for centuries. Humankind has always been on the hunt for new and better sources of energy. And yet this is a moment of profound change and one that raises complex questions about the direction we are heading.
  Right now, for example, in a dramatic reversal, developing countries are consuming more of the world's energy than developed countries. China and India's energy needs are growing rapidly along with their economies. Demand is also rising across Central Asia and South America too. There's been a surge in the global supply of natural gas, creating new opportunities for gas producers and lessening the world's dependence on oil. And technology has developed to the point where we can drill for oil and gas in places like the Arctic and the South China Sea, opening up new opportunities but also raising questions about our environment and catalyzing sources of tension.
  Now, who will benefit from these changes? Where will we get the energy to meet the world's growing needs? How can we make sure that the institutions that kept global energy markets well supplied in the 20th century, like the International Energy Agency, which the United States helped to create after the oil crisis in the 1970s, continue to be relevant and effective in the 21st century?
  And then of course, there are changes here at home that affect the international energy outlook. Many Americans don't yet realize the gains that the United States has made. Our use of renewable wind and solar power has doubled in the past four years. Our oil and natural gas production is surging. New auto standards will double how far we drive on a gallon of gas. And for the first time, we've introduced fuel efficiency standards for heavy trucks, vans, and buses, all of which will cut costs. That means we are less reliant on imported energy, which strengthens our global political and economic standing and the world's energy marketplace.
  Now we all know that energy sparks a great deal of debate in our country, but from my vantage point as the Secretary of State, outside of the domestic debate, the important thing to keep in mind is our country is not and cannot be an island when it comes to energy markets. Oil markets are global and natural gas markets are moving in that direction, many power grids span national boundaries. Even when Americans are using oil produced entirely within the United States, the price of that oil is largely determined by the global marketplace. So protecting our own energy security calls for us to make progress at home and abroad. And that requires American leadership.
  One year ago this week, after a major strategic review of our nation's diplomacy and development efforts, the State Department opened a new bureau. It's called the Bureau of Energy Resources, and it's led, as Dean Lancaster said, by my Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, Ambassador Carlos Pascual, who is here today. The bureau is charged with leading the State Department's diplomatic efforts on energy. And in the coming weeks, I will be sending policy guidance to every U.S. embassy worldwide, instructing them to elevate their reporting on energy issues and pursue more outreach to private sector energy partners.
  Now, make no mistake: In the past, the State Department obviously conducted energy-related diplomacy '' sometimes a great deal of it when specific crises arose. But we did not have a team of experts dedicated full-time to thinking creatively about how we can solve challenges and seize opportunities. And now we do. That, in and of itself, is a signal of a broader commitment by the United States to lead in shaping the global energy future.
  And by the way, Dean Lancaster, six members of the State Department's energy team are graduates of Georgetown University and they're here with me today as well. So thank you, Georgetown. (Applause.) That's a shameless pitch for the Foreign Service and the State Department. (Laughter.)
  Now we are working in partnership with the Department of Energy, which helps to shape domestic energy policies and works closely with energy ministries around the world. The Energy Department's National Labs are at the cutting edge of innovation, and it has a great deal of technical expertise, which it brings to bear globally. Its work at home and abroad is critical because the stronger our domestic energy policies, and the more we advance science and deliver technical help to our partners, the better positioned we are as a government, and certainly, the role that the State Department plays to help chart a long-term path to stability, prosperity, and peace.
  Let me speak just briefly about the three pillars of our global energy strategy. First, regarding the geopolitics of energy, we're focused on energy diplomacy. Now some of our energy diplomacy is related to issues in the headlines. You may have read about heated disputes over territorial claims in the South China Sea. Well, why do you think that's happening? There are potentially significant quantities of oil and gas resources right next door to countries with fast-growing energy needs. And you can see why at times the situation is becoming quite tense. We are supporting efforts by the parties themselves to adopt a clear code of conduct to manage those potential resources without conflict.
  Now some of our energy diplomacy is focused on remote areas like the Arctic, a frontier of unexplored oil and gas deposits, and a potential environmental catastrophe. The melting icecaps are opening new drilling opportunities as well as new maritime routes, so it's critical that we now act to set rules of the road to avoid conflict over those resources, and protect the Arctic's fragile ecosystem. We're working to strengthen the Arctic Council, which includes all eight Arctic nations, including the United States, so it can promote effective cooperation. Last summer I went up to Tromso, above the Arctic Circle, in Norway, to where the new Secretariat of the Arctic Council will be based, in order to discuss these issues, which four years ago didn't have much currency, but today are being seen as increasingly important.
  Another focus of our energy diplomacy is helping to promote competition and prevent monopolies. Consider what's been happening in Europe. For decades, many European nations received much of their natural gas via pipeline from one country: Russia. Few other sources were available. But that has now changed in part because of the increased production here in the United States, there's a lot more natural gas in the global market looking for a home. Plus, there's natural gas in the Caspian and in Central Asia. They'd like to sell it, and Europe would like to buy it. But first, they need to build pipelines. And that's the goal of a project called the Southern Corridor, which would stretch across the European continent. The United States has been an active partner to all those participants to help move this project to fruition.
  Now why have we done this? Well, we want to see countries grow and have stronger economies, but also because energy monopolies create risks. Anywhere in the world, when one nation is overly dependent on another for its energy, that can jeopardize its political and economic independence. It can make a country vulnerable to threats and coercion. And that's why NATO has identified energy security as a key security issue of our time. It's also why we created the U.S.-European Union Energy Council to deepen our cooperation on strategic energy issues. It's not just a matter of economic competition, as important as that is. It's also a matter of national and international security.
  Security is also at the heart of perhaps the most important energy diplomacy we have conducted in the Obama Administration. I'm sure you know that the United States and the European Union and other likeminded countries, as well as the United Nations, have imposed sanctions on Iran as part of our dual-track diplomatic effort to persuade or compel Iran to stop its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. You may also know that a major target of these sanctions is Iran's oil industry. What you may not know, because it doesn't make headlines, is how much painstaking diplomacy went into making these sanctions first, adopted, and then, effective.
  First, we needed to convince consumers of Iranian oil to stop or significantly reduce their purchases. At a time when demand for energy is high, many countries understandably were worried that reducing their purchases would put them in a very difficult position.
  So at the same time, we reached out to other major oil producers to encourage them to increase production so countries would be able to find alternative sources of oil. That was further helped by the fact that here in the United States we increased oil production by nearly 700,000 barrels a day. And we engaged countries on the benefits of diversifying their energy supply as a national security matter.
  The approach has worked. The EU put an oil embargo into place in July, and we have certified that every single one of Iran's oil importers have either significantly cut or completely ended their purchases of Iranian oil. We've been able to put unprecedented economic pressure on Iran, while minimizing the burdens on the rest of the world.
  Now this strategy influenced our engagement in other places too '' for example, Sudan and South Sudan, where the oil had stopped flowing and getting it going again mattered to both of them and to us. Both countries' economies depend on oil. Now most of the oil lies in the new country of South Sudan. But in order to export that oil, South Sudan needs pipelines and ports, which Sudan controls. The two countries were fighting over how much money South Sudan would pay to Sudan to use that infrastructure. They were so far apart, a compromise seemed impossible. So the United States stepped up our engagement in support of the African Union and the United Nations to avoid a return to war between the two countries, to help boost their economies, and to restart oil production at a critical moment for the world's oil supply.
  This past August I flew to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to urge the parties to recognize that a percentage of something is better than a percentage of nothing. And a month later, they signed a cooperation agreement, and it was ratified by the two parliaments this week. Now the situation is still fragile, and there are many other difficulties that they have to work out between themselves. But this was a step forward, and I want to commend both sides for their leadership and courage.
  We've also worked intensively to support Iraq's energy sector. In 2010, Iraq produced about 2.3 million barrels of oil each day. Today, that number is 3.2 million. And Iraq is now the number two oil producer in OPEC, surpassing Iran. This is a major Iraqi success story, helped by the Departments of State and Energy. We worked with the Iraqis to identify bottlenecks in their energy infrastructure, to improve their investment plans, and get more oil to the market. And there's no question that Iraq's increased production has helped stabilize oil markets at this pivotal moment, and it provides a foundation for a stronger economy to benefit the Iraqi people.
  I want to mention one additional diplomatic challenge we're focused on: how to manage resources that cross national boundaries. Boundaries are not always clearly delineated, especially at sea. If oil or gas is discovered in an area two countries share or where boundaries are inexact, how will they develop it? Earlier this year, after a long negotiation led by the State Department, the United States and Mexico reached a groundbreaking agreement on oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico, and we will be sending it to Congress for action soon. The agreement clearly lays out how the United States and Mexico will manage the resources that transcend our maritime boundary.
  Now, in addition to these examples of energy diplomacy, we're also focused on our second area of engagement: energy transformation '' helping to promote new energy solutions, including renewables and energy efficiency, to meet rising demand, diversify the global energy supply, and address climate change. The transformation to cleaner energy is central to reducing the world's carbon emissions and it is the core of a strong 21st century global economy.
  But we know very well that energy transformation cannot be accomplished by governments alone. In the next 25 years, the world is going to need up to $15 trillion in investment to generate and transmit electricity. Governments can and will provide some of it, but most will come from the private sector. Now, that's not only a huge challenge, but a huge opportunity. And I want to make sure that American companies and American workers are competing for those kinds of projects. After all, American companies are leaders across the field of energy '' leaders in renewables, high-tech, smart-grid energy infrastructure, bioenergy, energy efficiency. And in the coming decades, American companies should have the chance to do much more business worldwide, and by doing so, they will help to create American jobs.
  Now, governments can do several things to promote energy transformation, like educate our citizens about the value of energy efficiency and clean technology. But perhaps the most important thing we can do is enact policies that create an enabling environment that attracts investment and paves the way for large-scale infrastructure.
  In many parts of Central America and Africa, and in India and Pakistan, USAID supports training programs to help put power utilities on sounder commercial footing. And the Millennium Challenge Corporation is negotiating new compacts with several countries that would help them undertake wholesale, systemic energy reforms. And with the right business climate, agencies like the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation can help seal the deals that allow U.S. exports to flow.
  As an example, let me tell you what we're doing with our neighbors in Latin America.
  Earlier this year, at the Summit of the Americas, Colombia launched a new initiative it is leading with the United States called Connecting the Americas 2022. It aims to achieve universal access to electricity by the year 2022 through electrical interconnection in the hemisphere, linking electrical grids throughout the hemisphere from Canada all the way down to the southern tip of Chile, as well as extending it to the Caribbean. The Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, all the countries in the Organization of American States have joined this project. It stems from a broader effort called the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas, which I launched in 2010, which has sparked a wave of innovative partnerships across the hemisphere.
  Interconnection will help us get the most out of our region's resources. It seems simple, but if one country has excess power, it can sell it to a neighbor. The climate variability across our region means that if one country has a strong rainy season, it can export hydropower to a neighbor in the middle of a drought. Plus, by expanding the size of power markets, we can create economies of scale, attract more private investment, lower capital costs, and ultimately lower the costs for the consumer.
  There's another goal here as well. Thirty-one million people across the Americas lack access to reliable and affordable electricity. That clearly holds them back from making progress in so many areas. So one aim of Connect 2022 is to make sure that those 31 million people now do have power. With this single project, we will promote energy efficiency and renewable energy, fight poverty, create opportunity for energy businesses, including U.S. businesses, and forge stronger ties of partnership with our neighbors. It really is a win-win-win, in our opinion.
  Now, there's another aspect of energy transformation that I think is important to mention. To achieve the levels of private sector involvement that we need, it takes a level playing field so all companies can compete. But you know very well in some parts of the world, the playing field is hardly level. Some countries dictate how much national content must be used in energy production, or they give subsidies to their nation's companies to give them an edge. And that can be very challenging for American businesses to break through.
  So every day, in many parts of the world, our diplomats are out there fighting on behalf of American businesses and workers, taking aim at economic barriers and unfair practices. This September, we achieved a major breakthrough when the members nations of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation community agreed to cut tariffs on 54 key environmental goods, clearing the way for more trade in clean energy technology.
  At the same time that we're pursuing energy transformation, however, we have to take on the issue of energy poverty. And that's the third area of engagement I will mention. Because for those 1.3 billion people worldwide who do not have access to a reliable, sustainable supply of energy, it is a daily challenge and struggle. It also runs counter to energy transformation, because these people are burning firewood, coal, dung, charcoal, whatever they can get their hands on. They're using diesel generators, and no electricity is more expensive than that. And besides, these are dirty forms of energy '' bad for people's health, bad for the environment. But it doesn't have to be that way. We have the technology and know-how that can help people leapfrog to energy that is not only reliable and affordable, but clean and efficient. So energy transformation and ending energy poverty really do go hand in hand.
  The United Nations has launched an initiative called Sustainable Energy For All which aims to do three things: achieve universal access to modern energy by the year 2030; double both the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency and the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix. This year, companies and traditional development agencies together have committed more than $50 billion in financing for sustainable energy if '' and it's a big if '' governments create the right commercial environment. And so more than 60 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have begun action plans to bring energy investors to their markets. These investments will lower the high prices many poor people pay today, as well as increasing access to sustainable energy and opening new markets for American businesses.
  The United States has another initiative that tackles a pernicious aspect of energy poverty: cookstoves. Nearly 3 billion people '' that's almost half the world's population '' don't have access to modern cooking technology. They just have fires, often inside their homes, which cause toxic air pollution, killing nearly 2 million people '' mostly women and children '' every year. Think about that '' millions dying because of something as simple, as ordinary, as vital to their survival as a stove. Now, that's a problem that we are calling on the world to help us solve. Three years ago, I launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which is working with foundations, private companies, and other governments to get clean and affordable stoves into 100 million homes worldwide by the end of this decade.
  And finally, we're focused on a key factor in both energy poverty and political instability '' poor governance. History tells a frustrating tale. Countries that are rich with energy resources often have less democracy, more economic instability, more frequent civil wars. They are far more likely to be ruled by dictators, and oil can embolden those dictators to start conflicts with other countries. It's often called the resource curse. But the resources aren't the problem. It's greed. The resources can be used to transform a country's future for the better, but only if they're used the right way for the right purposes. So we need to work to undo the resource curse, especially now as demand for energy guarantees that more developing countries will become oil exporters.
  Some countries that recently discovered oil reserves are Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique. Not long ago, they were all embroiled in deadly conflicts. Their political situations are still fragile, so they need support to ensure that their energy resources don't end up causing more suffering and trouble than good. So the United States is working with eight new oil and gas-producing countries to help put into place the building blocks of good governance, including political institutions, transparent finances, and effective laws and regulations. In Uganda, for example, we're helping the government adopt strong environmental protection laws and regulations because oil and gas development is happening in ecologically fragile areas.
  We're also increasing our support for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, an international program that promotes transparency and accountability in the oil, gas, and mining industries. And a year ago, President Obama announced that the United States would join this organization as a signal of our commitment to this issue, and we are the '' only the second developed country to do so. And through the Cardin-Lugar amendment, the United States is now the first country in the world to require that our extractive industries companies disclose any payments they make to any government worldwide, an important step in the fight against corruption.
  So the message we're sending with all of these efforts, from working to resolve energy-related disputes to cooperating more with our neighbors on expanding electricity, is this: The United States is convinced that energy in all its complexity will continue to be one of the defining issues of the 21st century. And we are reshaping our foreign policy to reflect that.
  This is a moment of profound change. Countries that once weren't major consumers are. Countries that used to depend on others for their energy are now producers. How will this shape world events? Who will benefit, and who will not? How will it affect the climate, people's economic conditions, the strength of young democracies? All of this is still unknown. The answers to these questions are being written right now, and we intend to play a major role in writing them. We have no choice. We have to be involved everywhere in the world. The future security and prosperity of our nation and the rest of the world hangs in the balance. And all of us, especially all of you here today, have a stake in the outcome.
  So whatever you're studying here at Georgetown, I hope you'll follow this issue and maybe even consider becoming engaged, because the challenges that I've briefly outlined will only grow more urgent in the years ahead, and we need all the smart people we can possibly muster working to solve them. This will take our nation's best minds, our most talented public servants, our most innovative entrepreneurs, and millions of dedicated citizens. But I believe that we're up to the challenge, that we can, working together, secure a better future when it comes to energy supply and energy sustainability, and a future that by meeting those two objectives provides greater dignity and opportunity for all and protects the planet we all share at the same time.
  Thank you very much. (Applause.)
European Council - update #1
  Link to Article
  Source: Uploads by HermanVanRompuy
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:30
Twistory is now history
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 19 Oct 2012 04:29
  After more than four years, we're pulling the plug on Twistory. Twitter's recent API restrictions, as well as the fact that all three of us are involved in a number of other time-consuming initiatives, left us no choice but to take that highly unpleasant decision.Since our launch in April 2008, we served a calendar-friendly Twitter feed (to be used with most popular calendar applications) to almost 60K users in both a free and paid model. We received rave reviews from tech sites such as Techcrunch, Lifehacker, Read Write Web, The Next Web and web celebs Chris Pirillo and Steve Rubel.As of today, we're no longer accepting new users and we will shortly stop crawling free user Twitter feeds.If you're currently using Twistory Pro, your account will continue to be active for another 2-3 months and we won't bill you. Make sure to export a .csv of your Twistory somewhere the next few weeks to make sure you won't lose any of the collected data.As much as we hate to see the service go, it's time to move on to other projects. Thanks a lot for your support over the past few years!
  Koen, Tom and Tijs
Good news, lady (parts)! Sexist Obama says you are qualified for women's work, like teaching
  Link to Article
  Source: Twitchy » US Politics
  Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:44
  That's right. President Obama, while continuing to pitifully and bitterly cling to that whole Binder-gate nonsense, said this yesterday:
  How gracious of him! You ladies and your parts may just be able to learn stuff. And then take on some women's work like becoming a teacher!
  Remember, Obama has a history of dismissing women.
  And that just scratches the surface! What about reducing women to ''lady parts?'' And, you know, trying to turn them into obedient and enslavedJulias? Poor dears! They can't function on their own. Obama will pat you on your purty, little heads. Of course, there is far more misogyny in Obama's record, but we'll let Ace of Spades explain in a way that only he can. Warning: Your sides will be aching. You may even snort and that's totally not cute. But, it can't be helped. Read and giggle madly.
  Surely the lapdogs in the media will bark ''What about your GAAAAAFFES,'' right?
  Of course not. It's not like he said they could be teachers holding binders. Wait, a tic. Don't teachers use binders? And what about all those Trapper Keepers they will be surrounded by in the classroom? No matter; none of that fits the narrative anyway.
  Ah, yes. Remember that? Women who worked in Obama's White House called it a Boy's Club and said it was a ''hostile workplace for women.'' He won't even let those pesky women golf with him. That's not real women's work and all. Plus, cooties!
  Women can't be expected to decide such things on their own, silly! Thank goodness women have Man-God Obama to tell them what to do. If, of course, he thinks they are qualified enough.
  Ace then kindly informed women on Twitter of this fabulous new opportunity for them, provided graciously by President Obama!
  Remember, media: Sssh. Keep this on the down-low.
  Any other work for which ladies qualify?
  Yes! Don't forget beauticians. Ladies like make-up and hair and such. And shoes. But, they can't be shoe salesmen; that includes some math. Ick! Ace continues to spread the good word.
  What else does Obama think about the woman caricatures in his mind?
  Yes. Plus, women would then have plenty of time during free periods to sit around and contemplate their uteri. Of course, not all teaching, though. Home Economics? Yes. Especially sammich making. But other classes?
  Heaven forfend! And certainly not math. That is totally for boys. And what on earth does it have to do with vaginas? The only math ladies need to know is the ability to count to thirty. So that they know when they need to start worrying every month about Romney's nefarious plot to steal their tampons.
  Ace and other Twitter users explain further.
  Why all the panic-driven exposure of Obama's true, sexist and absurd self?
  Binders! Vagina Squirrel!
  Yep. Put the latest Gallup poll in a binder. Sad face Obama.
  Binders or Julia's shackles? Ladies who vote with their smarts and not their parts are choosing binders.
  Ace kindly reminds the ladies one last time about the gracious offer by President Obama.
  If only Eva Longoria had listened, huh?
  See, ladies? Just listen to your Man-King Obama. Or, you know, vote him out in November. Hey, he can always go back to teaching.
  Like this:Be the first to like this.
Is Drudge On To Something? Gloria Allred Refuses To Comment On Mitt Romney 'October Surprise' Speculation
  Link to Article
  Source: Radar Online
  Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:42
  Splash News/WENN
  By Jen Heger - Radar Assistant Managing Editor
  Is famed women's right attorney Gloria Allred about to pull an "October surprise" on Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney?
  That's the thinking, after Drudge Report founder and respected politico, Matt Drudge, tweeted Thursday: "Here she comes. Hearing Gloria Allred out there again, about to make a move. After all, it's her time of the campaign. Team O at the ready!!"
  PHOTOS: Political Hotties
  Allred, an outspoken supporter of President Barack Obama refused to confirm, or deny, Drudge's prediction, telling RadarOnline.com: "I have no comment at this time about Mr. Drudge's Tweet. I don't discuss meetings with potential clients."
  As RadarOnline.com previously reported, during GOP Meg Whitman's run to become governor of California, Allred represented Nicky Diaz, a former housekeeper for the Whitman family. The housekeeper alleged that she was terminated from her employment because she was an illegal immigrant, and that could have derailed Whitman's quest to become California's first female governor. Whitman ultimately lost the election to Democrat Jerry Brown.
  PHOTOS: The Name Game - Celebs Who've Changed Their Names
  Allred was a delegate for President Obama at the DNC in North Carolina last summer.
  Most polls show the presidential race between President Obama and Governor Romney to be in a statistical dead heat, with both candidates heavily courting the female vote.
  PHOTOS: Stars Who Look Like Other Stars
  Sound off in the comment section below '-- is Matt Drudge right '-- is Gloria Allred about to take on Mitt Romney?
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S.3525
  Link to Article
  Source: Senate Floor Today
  Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:38
  NEW SEARCH | HOME | HELP{link: 'http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.112s3525',title: 'THOMAS - Bill Summary and Status - S.3525' }
  S.3525Latest Title: Sportsmen's Act of 2012Sponsor:Sen Tester, Jon [MT] (introduced 9/10/2012) Cosponsors (14)Related Bills:H.R.991, H.R.1829, H.R.3065, H.R.3117, H.R.3365, H.R.3510, H.R.6441, S.714, S.899, S.1066, S.1201, S.1249, S.1494, S.2071, S.3422Latest Major Action: 9/22/2012 Senate floor actions. Status: Cloture on the motion to proceed to the measure invoked in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 84 - 7. Record Vote Number: 200.
AOL's twist on e-mail: You've got stacks
  Link to Article
  Source: CNET News
  Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:32
  AOL believes it can tame the inbox with Alto, Yelp calls out review cheaters, and Google reveals a low-budget Chromebook.
  Thursday's CNET Update is checking your away message:
  AOL's twist on e-mail: You've got stacksJust when you've given up all hope of having an organized inbox, along comes AOL with a new e-mail client called Alto. Today's tech news roundup looks at how Alto manages multiple accounts and sorts messages into stacks. The service is in beta test now (so you have to sign up for an invite to try it), but it could be open to everyone by February.
  In other news, Yelp is cracking down on companies that pay for reviews. If Yelp sees that a business is trying to inflate reviews, it will post an alert for 90 days to call out the company for not playing by the rules. And there will be a link to the evidence it complied. Pinterest is also getting tough. Users can now block and report questionable activity, such as posts with nudity, hate or violence.
  Google announced a new Samsung Chromebook that costs $250. But you get what you pay for: This browser-based system isn't like a typical laptop. Instead of downloading applications, everything is run through a Chrome Web browser. It's also not very powerful since it has an ARM processor. It could be something you keep around the house a tool for light online work.
  The Uber app now lets you hail a taxi in San Francisco, but it dropped taxi service in New York. Uber gave up battling New York's strict taxi-payment regulations.
  Watch CNET Update in the video above, or subscribe to the podcast via the links below.
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