Fwd: Trump: Mideast Explosion Could Destroy OPEC, Lower Oil Prices

Trump: Mideast Explosion Could Destroy OPEC, Lower Oil Prices

Donald Trump is mad as hell — and he's letting everybody know it. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV on Friday, the billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star lashes out at China, OPEC, Obama's Middle East dealings, the president's State of the Union address and more. Trump takes aim at America's "horrible" trade agreements, declares that the Middle East is going to explode, warns about "catastrophic" oil prices, and charges that Obama's Afghanistan policy is "dangerous and stupid." He also complains that the United States is a "laughing stock" throughout the world — and confirms that he is seriously considering running for president in 2012.

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Fwd: House Speaker Boehner warns against debt default | Reuters

House Speaker Boehner warns against debt default | Reuters

With the Treasury Department rapidly coming closer to bumping up against its statutory borrowing limit of $14.3 trillion, some of Boehner's fellow Republicans in Congress have suggested that no further borrowing should be authorized until deep cuts are made in federal spending.

Tawdry details of Obamacare - Washington Times

WOLF: Tawdry details of Obamacare - Washington Times

If you would like to know what the White House really thinks of Obamacare, there's an easy way. Look past its press releases. Ignore its promises. Forget its talking points. Instead, simply witness for yourself the outrageous way the White House protects its best friends from Obamacare. Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733. Among the fortunate is a who's who list of unions, businesses and even several cities and four states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee) but none of the friends of Barack feature as prominently as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

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Social networking under fresh attack as tide of cyber-scepticism sweeps US | Media | The Observer

Social networking under fresh attack as tide of cyber-scepticism sweeps US | Media | The Observer: "The way in which people frantically communicate online via Twitter, Facebook and instant messaging can be seen as a form of modern madness, according to a leading American sociologist.

'A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological,' MIT professor Sherry Turkle writes in her new book, Alone Together, which is leading an attack on the information age.

Turkle's book, published in the UK next month, has caused a sensation in America, which is usually more obsessed with the merits of social networking. She appeared last week on Stephen Colbert's late-night comedy show, The Colbert Report. When Turkle said she had been at funerals where people checked their iPhones, Colbert quipped: 'We all say goodbye in our own way.'

Turkle's thesis is simple: technology is threatening to dominate our lives and make us less human. Under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, it is actually isolating us from real human interactions in a cyber-reality that is a poor imitation of the real world.

But Turkle's book is far from the only work of its kind. An intellectual backlash in America is calling for a rejection of some of the values and methods of modern communications. 'It is a huge backlash. The different kinds of communication that people are using have become something that scares people,' said Professor William Kist, an education expert at Kent State University, Ohio.

The list of attacks on social media is a long one and comes from all corners of academia and popular culture. A recent bestseller in the US, The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, suggested that use of the internet was altering the way we think to make us less capable of digesting large and complex amounts of information, such as books and magazine articles. The book was based on an essay that Carr wrote in the Atlantic magazine. It was just as emphatic and was headlined: Is Google Making Us Stupid?

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Egypt Shows How Easily Internet Can Be Silenced - CNBC

Egypt Shows How Easily Internet Can Be Silenced - CNBC: "The move by Egyptian authorities to seal off the country almost entirely from the Internet shows how easily a state can isolate its people when telecoms providers are few and compliant.



In an attempt to stop the frenzied online spread of dissent against President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule, not only Facebook and Twitter but the entire Internet was shut down overnight, leaving some 20 million users stranded.


Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC, a European not-for-profit Internet infrastructure forum, says immature markets with few providers can achieve such shutdowns relatively easily.

'The more simple the topology is and the fewer Internet services providers there are, the easier it is for any government or the telco themselves to control access into any geographical area,' he said.

'If you have a relatively diverse telecoms market and a very much meshed Internet topology then it's much more difficult to do than if you have the traditional telecoms structure of two decades ago and they control all the international connections. Obviously that creates a choke point,' he said.

Despite the rapid transformation of the Web during its short history, and the unprecedented freedom of expression it has enabled, the Internet still has vulnerable points that can be exploited by governments or for commercial interests.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Iran Sees Rise of Islamic Hard-Liners in Arab Lands - NYTimes.com

Iran Sees Rise of Islamic Hard-Liners in Arab Lands - NYTimes.com: "EHRAN — Hopeful that the protests sweeping Arab lands may create an opening for hard-line Islamic forces, conservatives in Iran are taking deep satisfaction in the events in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, where secular leaders have faced large-scale uprisings.

While the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confronted its own popular uprising two years ago — and successfully suppressed it — conservatives in Iran said they saw little similarity between those events and the Arab revolts, and instead likened the recent upheavals to Iran’s own 1979 Islamic revolution.

“In my opinion, the Islamic Republic of Iran should see these events without exception in a positive light,” said Mohammad-Javad Larijani, secretary general of the Iranian High Council for Human Rights and one of the most outspoken figures among Iran’s traditional conservatives.

He made it clear that he hoped that the “anti-Islamic” government of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in Tunisia, would be replaced by a “people’s government,” meaning one in which conservative Islamic forces would gain the upper hand, as they did when Iranian people overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, establishing a quasi-theocracy.

On the other side are the United States and France, he said, who are “doing everything they can to ride the wave and prevent the people from establishing the regime that they desire.”

“I am more optimistic about Egypt,” Mr. Larijani said in comments published Friday on the Web site Khabar Online, which is closely linked to his brother, Ali Larijani, the Parliament speaker.

“There, Muslims are more active in political agitation and, God willing, they will establish the regime that they want,” Mohammad-Javad Larijani said.

Some here have even echoed the pan-Islamic rhetoric of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“Today, as a result of the gifts of the Islamic revolution in Iran, freedom-loving Islamic peoples such as the peoples of Tunisia, Egypt and nearby Arab countries are standing up to their oppressive governments,” said a leading hard-line cleric, Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, who is believed to have influence with President Ahmadinejad.

In comments published Friday on the Web site of the semiofficial news agency ISNA, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, who favors a political system in which elections merely endorse “divinely chosen” clerical leaders, congratulated the people of Tunisia and Egypt, stating that they had acted “based on the principles” of Iran’s Islamic revolution.

Meanwhile, the leaders of Iran’s “green” opposition movement, which led large street protests here two years ago after a disputed election, have so far issued no statement on the events in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.

While foreign commentators have tried to draw comparisons and assess differences between the overthrow of Mr. Ben Ali’s government in Tunisia, many here have found such comparisons strained and unconvincing.

“No one can compare Arab and Iranian society with each other,” said a former reformist journalist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing the attention of the security services.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Consumers hit with higher food prices

Consumers will have to dust off creative cost-containing measures this year as food prices escalate after two years of very low inflation. The cost of food is expected to go up 2 percent to 3 percent, according to government economists. Some items, such as meats and dairy products, could see much steeper percentage increases — probably in double digits compared with late 2009.

To consumers, many of whom are still struggling financially, the increase could seem unbearable. Some foods have suddenly become more expensive, even as others have stayed the same or gotten a little cheaper.
A food basket survey by The Tennessean earlier this month found a 12.5 percent spike in prices for a typical grocery basket filled with staples compared with November 2009, when prices were at low ebb after world stock market turmoil.

Several factors are at work boosting today's food prices.
First, as the world's economy has started to recover, the demand for grains such as corn, wheat and soybeans has risen. Farmers are now exporting more grain internationally, while at the same time, demand in the United States has climbed, too.

Second, because there's more demand for grain, farmers who raise livestock — both for meat and dairy — are being forced to pay more to feed their herds.

And third, fuel prices are up, making it more expensive to deliver products.

Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch" - Tech Talk - CBS News

Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch" - Tech Talk - CBS News: "A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a 'national cyberemergency,' and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year.

Internet companies should not be alarmed by the legislation, first introduced last summer by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), a Senate aide said last week. Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

'We're not trying to mandate any requirements for the entire Internet, the entire Internet backbone,' said Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and counsel for the committee.

Instead, Milhorn said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the point of the proposal is to assert governmental control only over those 'crucial components that form our nation's critical infrastructure.'

Portions of the Lieberman-Collins bill, which was not uniformly well-received when it became public in June 2010, became even more restrictive when a Senate committee approved a modified version on December 15. The full Senate did not act on the measure.

The revised version includes new language saying that the federal government's designation of vital Internet or other computer systems 'shall not be subject to judicial review.' Another addition expanded the definition of critical infrastructure to include 'provider of information technology,' and a third authorized the submission of 'classified' reports on security vulnerabilities.

The idea of creating what some critics have called an Internet 'kill switch' that the president could flip in an emergency is not exactly new.

A draft Senate proposal that CNET obtained in August 2009 authorized the White House to 'declare a cybersecurity emergency,' and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to 'order the disconnection' of certain networks or Web sites. House Democrats have taken a similar approach in their own proposals.

Lieberman, who recently announced he would not seek re-election in 2012, said last year that enactment of his bill needed to be a top congressional priority. 'For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the Internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets,' he said.

Civil libertarians and some industry representatives have repeatedly raised concerns about the various proposals to give the executive branch such broad emergency power. On the other hand, as Lieberman and Collins have highlighted before, some companies, including Microsoft, Verizon, and EMC Corporation, have said positive things about the initial version of the bill.

But last month's rewrite that bans courts from reviewing executive branch decrees has given companies new reason to worry. 'Judicial review is our main concern,' said Steve DelBianco, director of the NetChoice coalition, which includes eBay, Oracle, Verisign, and Yahoo as members. 'A designation of critical information infrastructure brings with it huge obligations for upgrades and compliance.'

In some cases, DelBianco said, a company may have a 'good-faith disagreement' with the government's ruling and would want to seek court review. 'The country we're seeking to protect is a country that respects the right of any individual to have their day in court,' he said. 'Yet this bill would deny that day in court to the owner of infrastructure.'

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

NationalJournal.com - The Phantom 15 Million - Friday, January 21, 2011

NationalJournal.com - The Phantom 15 Million - Friday, January 21, 2011: "The Great Recession wiped out what amounts to every U.S. job created in the 21st century. But even if the recession had never happened, if the economy had simply treaded water, the United States would have entered 2010 with 15 million fewer jobs than economists say it should have.

Somehow, rapid advancements in technology and the opening of new international markets paid dividends for American companies but not for American workers. An economy that long thrived on its dynamism, shedding jobs in outdated and less competitive industries and adding them in innovative new fields, fell stagnant in the swirls of the most globalized decade of commerce in human history.

Even now, no one really knows why.

This we do know: The U.S. economy created fewer and fewer jobs as the 2000s wore on. Turnover in the job market slowed as workers clung to the positions they held. Job destruction spiked in each of the decade’s two recessions. In contrast to the pattern of past recessions, when many employers recalled laid-off workers after growth picked up again, this time very few of those jobs came back.

These are the first clues—incomplete, disconcerting, and largely overlooked—to a critical mystery bedeviling a nation struggling to crawl out of near-double-digit unemployment. We know what should have transpired over the past 10 years: the completion of a circle of losses and gains from globalization. Emerging technology helped firms send jobs abroad or replace workers with machines; it should have also spawned domestic investment in innovative industries, companies, and jobs. That investment never happened—not nearly enough of it, in any case.

If we can’t figure out why, we may be doomed to a future that feels like a long jobless recovery, no matter how fast our economy grows. “It’s the trillion-dollar question,” says David E. Altig, senior vice president and research director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, where economists are beginning to explore the shifts that have clubbed American workers like a blackjack. “Something big has happened. I really don’t think we have a complete story yet.”


THE LOST DECADE

We certainly didn’t see it coming. At the turn of the millennium, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that the U.S. economy would create nearly 22 million net jobs in the 2000s, only slightly fewer than the boom 1990s yielded. The economists predicted “good opportunities for jobs” and “an optimistic vision for the U.S. economy” through 2010.

Businesses would reap the gains of new trading markets, the projection said, and continue to invest in technologies to boost the productivity of their operations. High-tech jobs would abound, both for systems analysts with four years of college and for computer-support analysts with associate’s degrees. The manufacturing sector would stop a decades-long jobs slide, and technology would lead the turnaround. Hundreds of thousands of newly hired factory workers would make cutting-edge electrical and communications products, including semiconductors, satellites, cable-television equipment, and “cellular phones, modems, and facsimile and answering machines.”

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Obama to Push New Spending in State of the Union - WSJ.com

Obama to Push New Spending in State of the Union - WSJ.com: "President Barack Obama will call for new government spending on infrastructure, education and research in his State of the Union address Tuesday, sharpening his response to Republicans in Congress who are demanding deep budget cuts, people familiar with the speech said.

Mr. Obama will argue that the U.S., even while trying to reduce its budget deficit, must make targeted investments to foster job growth and boost U.S. competitiveness in the world economy. The new spending could include initiatives aimed at building the renewable-energy sector—which received billions of dollars in stimulus funding—and rebuilding roads to improve transportation, people familiar with the matter said. Money to restructure the No Child Left Behind law's testing mandates and institute more competitive grants also could be included.

While proposing new spending, Mr. Obama also will lay out significant budget cuts elsewhere, people familiar with the plans say, though they will likely fall short of what Republican lawmakers have requested.

In arguing that U.S. competitiveness is at stake, Mr. Obama plans to use his nationally televised speech to try to frame the spending debate with Republicans that is expected to dominate Congress in the coming months. 'We seek to do everything we can to spur hiring and ensure our nation can compete with anybody on the planet,' Mr. Obama said Friday after touring a General Electric Co. plant in Schenectady, N.Y. He cited clean-energy manufacturing, infrastructure and education as keys to competitiveness.

Previewing the expected theme of his speech, Mr. Obama on Friday appointed GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt to lead a new President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Commenting on the new advisory panel, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said that unless its 'first recommendations are to reverse the damage the policies of the last two years have done to the business climate, job creation and the exploding national debt, I fear it will do more to create good public relations for the White House than good jobs for struggling Americans.'

Republicans are casting the White House's pivot toward competitiveness as an excuse for bigger government and more spending. They say a surge in federal spending and a $1.3 trillion budget deficit are impeding job creation, and dramatic spending cuts are needed immediately.

In the House, Republicans are pushing to cut $100 billion from the annual budget as soon as this year. A coalition of House Republicans proposed Thursday cutting $2.5 trillion in spending over a decade, pushing nondefense discretionary spending down to 2006 levels for 10 years.

'Today's the day we finally stop kicking the can down the road,' Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) said as the proposal was introduced Thursday.

White House officials have said that spending cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republicans could stall the economic recovery. Still, Mr. Obama is expected to pair his calls for investment with an admonition that the country must embark on targeted spending cuts. Late last year, he called for a two-year wage freeze for all federal civilian employees to save $5 billion. He's expected to push for spending cuts on Tuesday, particularly in duplicative or dysfunctional federal programs.

Details of those cuts couldn't be learned Friday evening. Programs he has gone after in the past include agricultural subsidies, defense programs such as C-17 military transport planes, and an alternate engine for the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Advocate of Violence - WSJ.com

Advocate of Violence - WSJ.com: "In a unanimous unsigned opinion, the justices overturned Brandenburg's conviction: 'The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.'

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

A friend thought you might be interested in this article

If food costs more, will you buy any less? Surprisingly enough, that simple question may be the key to whether 2011 sees a strong rebound in economic growth, or is, instead, a bust.
The issue is that raw food prices are indeed way up. Corn is at a two and a half year high. And some think it could rise by another 30% this year. Sugar was up 77% in the last six months of 2010. Beef prices are up as well. On the face of it, climbing food prices seem like a bad thing. It can cause inflation and cause people to buy less of everything else. Rising food prices have already lead to violent riots in Tunisia and Algeria. But a number of economists, including Goldman Sachs' Andrew Tilton and IHS Global Insight's Nariman Behravesh, say this time around, food prices won't necessarily be a recovery killer. Here's why:First of all, food prices might not be as much of a driver of economic growth as many people think. In a recent research paper World Food Prices and Monetary Policy published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Luis Catao, of the International Monetary Fund, and Rutgers University economist Roberto Chang argue that rising food prices do not always lead to slower growth. In a number of scenarios, economic growth will actually increase after a rise in food prices.
How could that be? The real determinate of whether an economy will grow or shrink has more to do with policy makers response to rising food prices. A gradual increase interest rates by a central bankers will eliminate any adverse effects of climbing food prices, and may actually boost growth.
The problem, for that scenario, is that around the world most policy makers have generally followed a policy of keeping rates as low as possible. Low rates tend to cause your local currency to fall, and that can boost exports. But that might soon be changing. Rising inflation in India and elsewhere may soon force a number of countries to raise interest rates. Indeed, China has already begun raising its lending rates. Of course, in the US, Bernanke & Co. seem to have no plans to raise rates anytime soon.


Read more: http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/01/20/will-rising-food-prices-kill-the-recovery/#ixzz1BhgnUBcy

Donald Trump: We are being ouwitted

Record Food Prices Causing Africa Riots Stoking U.S. - Businessweek

Record Food Prices Causing Africa Riots Stoking U.S. - Businessweek: "Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The same record food prices causing riots in Algeria and export bans in India are allowing President Barack Obama to combine the biggest-ever U.S. farm exports with the tamest inflation since the 1960s.

Global food costs jumped 25 percent last year to an all- time high in December, according to the United Nations. Countries probably spent at least $1 trillion on imports, with the poorest paying as much as 20 percent more than in 2009, the UN says. In the U.S., the largest exporter, retail food rose 1.5 percent last year and will gain as little as 2 percent in 2011, the Department of Agriculture estimates.

Governments from Beijing to Belgrade are boosting imports, limiting sales or releasing stockpiles to curb food inflation. Higher prices will push U.S. agricultural exports up 16 percent to a record $126.5 billion this year, according to a USDA forecast. While U.S. consumers haven’t been squeezed so far, grocers from Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. to SuperValu Inc. have said they plan increases. Commodities will keep rising, according to a Bloomberg survey of more than 100 analysts and traders.

“We are absolutely spoiled,” said Jason Britt, president of Central States Commodities Inc., a research and analysis company in Kansas City, Missouri. “We have the luxury that we spend a small percentage on food. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see larger bites of our incomes used.”

Raw-Material Costs

About 19 cents of every dollar spent on food covers raw- material costs in the U.S., so retailers can limit increases by cutting spending on labor or marketing, said Ephraim Leibtag, a food economist at the USDA in Washington. The consumer price index rose 4.2 percent since the end of 2007, the smallest three-year increase since 1965, Labor Department data show.

Producer spending for processed foods rose 4.9 percent in the U.S. last year, while consumer prices increased 1.5 percent, Labor Department data show. A record 43.2 million Americans received food stamps in October. The jobless rate is running at 9.4 percent, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said Jan. 7 the labor market may take five years to recover.

Corn advanced 52 percent last year in Chicago, wheat jumped 47 percent and soybeans gained 34 percent. Cattle futures touched a record on Jan. 13 in Chicago, a day after coffee reached a 13-year high in New York. Rice futures jumped as much as 3.6 percent in Chicago today.

Wheat may rise as much as another 16 percent this year, with sugar, corn, soybeans, coffee and cocoa also gaining, according to the Bloomberg survey of analysts, traders and investors in December.

Farm Income

The farm boom is aiding Obama’s goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years, with this year’s shipments accounting for 4 percent of the $3.14 trillion needed to meet the target.

U.S. farm income last year probably exceeded the 2004 record of $87.3 billion, and cropland values gained as much as 10 percent, according to Neil Harl, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University and former adviser to the governments of Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

Moline, Illinois-based Deere & Co., the world’s largest farm-equipment maker, will report record profit of $5.47 a share this year, according to the mean of 11 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Earnings for Plymouth, Minnesota-based Mosaic Co., North America’s second-largest fertilizer producer, will more than double to $4.57 a share in the year ending in May, the mean of seven estimates shows.

Cover Costs

Northfield, Illinois-based Kraft Foods Inc., the world’s second-biggest food company, raised prices of Maxwell House and Yuban coffee in the U.S. three times last year. General Mills Inc., the Minneapolis-based maker of Cheerios and Lucky Charms, said in November it would increase some cereal prices.

Products for supermarkets rose 1.8 percent in the three months ended Sept. 22, while consumer prices gained 1.6 percent, Winn-Dixie Chief Executive Officer Peter Lynch said on a Nov. 2 conference call. Some will probably keep increasing to cover costs, and the Jacksonville, Florida-based company has a “relatively good” chance of passing that to consumers, he said.

Starbucks Corp., the world’s largest coffee-shop operator, said in September it would raise some prices after the jump in coffee and milk costs. Domino’s Pizza Inc., the biggest U.S. pizza-delivery chain, said in October it would charge customers more after a 29 percent jump in cheese.

Steaks, ‘Baconator’

Morton’s Restaurant Group Inc., a Chicago-based steakhouse chain, is considering its third increase in the past year, Chief Financial Officer Ronald DiNella said at a conference in Dana Point, California, on Jan. 12. Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc., the maker of the 1,360-calorie Baconator Triple burger, said in November it was raising prices in some stores.

SuperValu, the owner of Save-A-Lot and Cub Foods stores, expects most of its rises to be in the “lower single-digit range,” with “double-digit increases” for some commodity items, Chief Executive Officer Craig Herkert said on a conference call Jan. 11.

Some increases may not stick as companies compete for market share. “Low price is the focus in food,” said Bill Simon, president and chief executive of U.S. stores at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

How the Happy Meal ban explains San Francisco - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly

How the Happy Meal ban explains San Francisco - Page 1 - News - San Francisco - SF Weekly: "In August 2010, San Francisco Supervisor Eric Mar decided that city intervention was needed to help him raise his daughter.

As Mar later told reporters, he was shocked to discover a trove of toys from McDonald's Happy Meals stashed in her room. Mar was the one taking his daughter to McDonald's and buying the food — but he said that the 'pester power' of a preteen was simply too much for him to withstand on his own. So he proposed that the city ban restaurants from including toys with meals of more than 600 calories that lack agreed-upon amounts of fruits and vegetables.

Mar's 'Healthy Meal Incentive Ordinance' subsequently passed in November by an 8-3 vote in the Board of Supervisors — a veto-proof majority. Barring legal action, the Happy Meal as we know it will be verboten in San Francisco come Dec. 1. Eric Mar's daughter has been saved.

Both conservative blowhard Bill O'Reilly and left-leaning comedian Lewis Black — and many, many people in-between — were left to wonder 'What the hell?' in the wake of San Francisco's ban. It's not the first time. In recent years, San Francisco government has passed numerous laws to make us healthier, greener, and — in the city's eyes — all-around better people. Whether we like it or not. This includes banning the sale of cigarettes in drugstores, and, later, supermarkets; banning plastic bags in large chain stores; banning bottled water in City Hall, and the sale of soft drinks on government property; banning the declawing of cats; making composting mandatory; and forbidding city departments from doing business with companies that were involved in the (pre–Civil War) slave trade, yet haven't publicly atoned.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Republicans to hold spending vote before State of the Union - TheHill.com

Republicans to hold spending vote before State of the Union - TheHill.com: "House Republicans will force Democrats to go “on the record” about government spending in a symbolic vote next week timed to coincide with President Obama’s State of the Union address.

The House Rules Committee on Wednesday approved by a party-line vote of 8-4 a resolution calling on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to limit non-security discretionary spending in the second half of 2011 to 2008 levels “or less.”

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Thou Shalt Not Offend Islam by Thierry Baudet - City Journal

Thou Shalt Not Offend Islam by Thierry Baudet - City Journal: "A firsthand account of the Dutch trial of Geert Wilders
19 January 2011

Last year, I attended the Dutch trial of the century: that of Geert Wilders, leader of the third-largest party in the Dutch parliament. Sparking the charges against Wilders were about 50 statements that he had made about Islam. Three of the most widely circulated, from newspaper columns that Wilders wrote, will give an idea of the rest: “The heart of the problem is the fascist nature of Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed as laid down in the Islamic Mein Kampf: the Koran”; “We have a huge problem with Muslims which crosses boundaries in every field, and we come up with solutions that wouldn’t make a mouse go back into its cage”; and “Islam is a violent religion. If Mohammed were living here today, Parliament would instantly agree to chase him out of the country in disgrace.”

Wilders was charged under articles 137c and 137d of the Dutch penal code, which forbid group insult, hate speech, and incitement to discrimination. The trial was hugely controversial, partly because the articles—which were passed in the 1930s as an attempt to halt rising anti-Semitism—have rarely been invoked. Further, the fact that the leader of a powerful anti-establishment party was standing trial for his opinions inevitably cast a political shadow over the affair.

The trial dominated public debate in the Netherlands for months and captivated Europe as well. It will probably continue to do so for at least another year, because Wilders’s lawyers successfully appealed for a declaration that the judges in the Amsterdam District Court had appeared biased. The trial will now have to start all over again. What follows is an account based on my firsthand observations of this tawdry episode.

Wilders’s prosecution came about in a most unusual way. The public prosecutor, Paul Velleman, initially refused to prosecute him because, in his view, Wilders’s statements did not break the law. In refusing to press charges, Velleman acknowledged that Wilders’s statements “may have been insulting for Muslims,” but concluded that Wilders was not guilty of lawbreaking, since the statements were made “in the context of public debate.” Velleman added that Wilders didn’t incite hatred or call for discrimination, as his comments “concerned Islam the religion and not Muslims as human beings.” The relevant laws did not forbid merely criticizing a religion, he maintained.

But Gerard Spong, a prominent defense lawyer and critic of Wilders’s, appealed Velleman’s decision to the Court of Appeal, which, according to Dutch law, can order the prosecutor to prosecute anyway. On January 21, 2009, that’s just what it did. After stating that they “disagreed with the public prosecutor,” the court’s three judges concluded that Wilders’s statements were “punishable under Dutch law” and added that “in the past, others, including politicians, have been convicted for less.” (In an accompanying footnote, the court referred to only one case.) By ruling that Wilders “abuses the liberty of expression” and “incites discrimination and hatred against a group of people or a community of believers,” the Court of Appeal scandalously exceeded its authority. The presumption of innocence is, after all, one of the central principles of a fair trial. It is not up to the Court of Appeal to decide whether the accused is guilty, only to decide whether a prosecution is warranted. If Wilders is ever found guilty and chooses to appeal the verdict, he would have to appeal to a court that had pronounced his guilt before trial.

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Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Fed Policy has consequences

Fed Policy goes Global


The Fed’s planned expansion of liquidity, while perhaps aimed at U.S. fi nancial markets, probably has placed upward pressure on foreign asset prices as well. Money flows transcend national boundaries easily in search of returns, and investors have continued to flock to the stock, bond and real estate markets of emerging economies. For example, investor flows into emerging-market equity funds reached an all-time high of $4.2
billion in September, while many country stock indexes from Turkey to Mexico also have reached
record levels.

 While this can be a positive development for national economies, it potentially can lead to asset bubbles or other distortions if prices rise too quickly or in too great a magnitude.


Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness

Moscow reaffirms Soviet recognition of Palestine - Yahoo! News

Moscow reaffirms Soviet recognition of Palestine - Yahoo! News: "JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday Moscow had recognized an independent Palestinian state in 1988 and was not changing that position adopted by the former Soviet Union.

But on his first visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as Russian head of state, Medvedev stopped short of making a ringing declaration of recognition of Palestinian statehood by the Russian Federation that he represents.

Israel has been alarmed in the past two months by a string of recognitions by Latin American states including Brazil and Argentina which some analysts say could be a precursor to a move by the Palestinians to seek full United Nations membership.

At a news conference with Medvedev in Jericho, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said: 'We remember that Russia was one of the first states in the world to recognize the state of Palestine in 1988.'

Medvedev responded, saying: 'Russia made its choice a long time ago ...we supported and will support the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to an independent state with its capital in East Jerusalem.'

The Soviet Union recognized a Palestinian state in 1988, after it was declared by the late Yasser Arafat in a move that won broad support in the Communist bloc and Third World but had little real impact on diplomatic

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Pump prices eyed as reason Americans driving less - Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011 | 3:24 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun

Pump prices eyed as reason Americans driving less - Sunday, Jan. 16, 2011 | 3:24 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun: "Americans are driving less, with the holidays behind them and gasoline at two-year highs.

Gas costs around $3.10 a gallon, the highest price since mid-October 2008. Americans usually drive less in the winter, and recent bad weather across the country was further incentive to stay home. And money needs to go towards paying off holiday credit card bills.

Analysts are closely watching economic news and consumer sentiment to determine how much high gas prices are influencing consumer habits. That could affect the pace of the economy in the months ahead.

Drivers are 'pulling back on gas right now but you can't tell whether it's weather-related,' said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. 'Unless you're in Boca Raton, Fla., or San Diego, you're seeing pretty sleepy midwinter demand.'

According to research firm MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, gasoline demand for the week ended Jan. 7 was 8.39 million barrels a day, a level not seen since Sept. 30, 2005. Demand fell 2.9 percent from a year ago.

Consumer prices rose last month by the largest amount since June 2009. Gasoline prices accounted for about 80 percent of the increase, the Labor Department said Friday. The gasoline index jumped 8.5 percent in December. Gas prices rose from about $2.86 a gallon on Dec. 1 to $.3.07 at year's end.

The price continues to rise, although at a slower pace. The national average for unleaded regular gasoline was $3.095 a gallon Friday, according to Wright Express, AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That's up nearly 34 cents from a year ago.

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