"The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries."
A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise...
President Obama is expected to send a $3.8 trillion budget to Congress on Monday for the coming fiscal year, according to The New York Times.
Obama's budget would increase financing for education and for civilian research programs by 6 percent and provide cash-strapped states $25 billion, the newspaper reported.
Britain is facing a new Al Qaeda terror threat from suicide ‘body bombers’ with explosives surgically inserted inside them.
Until now, terrorists have attacked airlines, Underground trains and buses by secreting bombs in bags, shoes or underwear to avoid detection.
But an operation by MI5 has uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda is planning a new stage in its terror...
The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He even chided Republicans for not applauding on that point. However, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. Other polling shows that nearly half the nation’s voters expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years.
This website recently popped up on the internet:
The Tea Party Is Over-
Our Mission: To prevent the Tea Party’s dangerous ideas from gaining legislative traction.
It is paid for by the American Public Policy Committee. Well, according to opensecrets.org, the two donors for American Public Policy Committee this year are Patriot Majority and Patriot Majority West.
However, according to opensecrets.org, the 2nd largest contributor in 2008 to Patriot Majority was SEIU and other top Unions around America.
Hatch said Thursday that using reconciliation would be “one of the worst grabs for power in the history of the country” that would permanently impact relations between the two parties.
“It is going to be outright war and it should be, because it would be such an abuse of the reconciliation rules,” Hatch said. “If they abuse those rules it is going to lead to even more heated animosities between not just the two parties, but even between individual senators.”
The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed won't be held in lower Manhattan and could take place in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, sources said last night.
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...But if Democrats stay on their current downward trajectory, their majority will be history. The retirements that are likely to result from almost any deterioration in the House Democrats' current situation would reduce their chances of maintaining control to 50-50.
The Senate leader, considered among the most vulnerable incumbents in the nation, has said he will raise $25 million for his campaign to win a fifth term in the Senate. He's raised $15 million so far and will need to raise nearly $1 million a month to hit that target.
One would hope the President of the United States would know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But in last night's State of the Union Address, President Obama said:We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal….
Um, wrong founding document, Mr. President...
CAIRO — Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.
It reads like a dream order for some wild frat party...
But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for "in-flight services" – including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That's almost $1,000 per week.
A day after bashing lobbyists, President Barack Obama’s administration has invited K Street insiders to join private briefings on a range of topics addressed in Wednesday’s State of the Union.
“We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole-vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in."
"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."
The nonpartisan CBO report, published Tuesday, attributes the $75 billion increase to added unemployment-related costs. More Americans are receiving unemployment benefits for lost jobs that the stimulus bill was meant to save, the report says.
About $21 billion of the added costs stem from higher unemployment compensation payments, while the remainder of the increase comes from food assistance payments and interest payments from states on taxable government bonds, the Washington Times reported.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday floated the idea of a two-track plan for health care reform — with Congress pursuing easier-to-pass incremental changes now and comprehensive reform later.
“We believe that it’s possible to have comprehensive health care reform as we go forward, but at the same time, it can be on another track where some things can just be passed outside of that legislation, and we’ll be doing both,” Pelosi said in an interview with POLITICO…
“We have to get it done,” the speaker said. “What the process is doesn’t matter. The outcome is what is important, and what it means to working families in America.”
'Instead of reducing the spending, it's locking in these huge increases that were instituted last year'
An artist's concept image shows the Ares I crew launch vehicle on the launch pad at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The upper stage is the wide part of the rocket near the top. Credit: NASA/MSFC
NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there, if President Obama gets his way....
"We certainly don't need to go back to the moon," one administration official said.
The anger is most palpable in the House, where Pelosi and her allies believe Obama’s reluctance to stake his political capital on health care reform in mid-2009 contributed to the near collapse of negotiations now....
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters the legislative process in the Senate is “broken” — prompting Reid to later quip: “I could give you a few comments on how I feel about the House.”
Accent is mine.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely Delaware voters shows longtime GOP congressman Mike Castle leading New Castle County Executive Chris Coons 56% to 27%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, and 13% are undecided.
Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than distrust. 49% say they trust it to 37% who do not.
To attack the $1.4 trillion deficit, the White House will propose limits on discretionary spending unrelated to the military, veterans, homeland security and international affairs, according to senior administration officials. Also untouched are big entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
"I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all," the senator told a Grand Rapids audience on Oct. 2. "The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I'm in the White House."
Despite President Obama’s long history of criticizing the Bush administration for “sweetheart deals” with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids, Fox News has learned.
Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.
“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.” [snip]
At the same time, the public has shifted the emphasis it assigns to two major policy issues: dealing with the nation’s energy problem and reducing the budget deficit. About half (49%) say that dealing with the nation’s energy problem should be a top priority, down from 60% a year ago. At the same time, there has been a modest rise in the percentage saying that reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority, from 53% to 60%.
PRINCETON, NJ -- The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats' (88%) and Republicans' (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton.
NBC's David Gregory on Sunday used his interview with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bash Republicans.
After his largely friendly discussion with senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, the "Meet the Press" host abruptly changed his tone and manner with the very first question to McConnell, "Is there one Republican who will support any Democratic healthcare initiative?"
Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry is expected to announce his retirement tomorrow morning, according to three sources briefed on the decision.
Berry will become the sixth Democrat in a competitive seat to leave in the last two months but the first to announce his retirement since the party's special election loss in Massachusetts last Tuesday.
An Indian official said that though the government had been thinking of signing the accord because it “did not have any legal teeth and would be good diplomatically”; it felt irked because of repeated messages from both UN officials and developed countries to accede to it.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seeking a number of clarifications on the implications of the accord that India ...
SCHULTZ: I told him he was full of sh*t is what I told him. … And then he gave me the Dick Cheney f-bomb. … I told Robert Gibbs, I said “And I’m sorry you’re swearing at me, but I’m just trying to help you out. I’m telling you you’re losing your base. Do you understand you’re losing your base?”
"Turned the Economy Around."
"I'm sorry - you can't say you've turned the economy around when there are 4 million jobs that have been lost on the President's watch, when the Debt is higher, and the Stimulus did not produce the jobs the administration said it would."
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
“More People Voted to Express Support for Barack Obama Than to Oppose Him”
The chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has used bogus claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Inspired by Saul Alinsky's book, "Rules for Radicals" and how it has become the 'liberal primer' for the now flaming socialist Democrat Party.
Struggling to salvage health reform, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun considering a list of changes to the Senate bill in hopes of making it acceptable to liberal House members, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Although satellite temperature measurements have been available since 1978, most global temperature analyses still rely on data captured from land-based thermometers, scattered more or less about the planet. It is that data which NOAA receives and disseminates – although not before performing some sleight-of-hand on it.
Smith has done much of the heavy lifting involved in analyzing the NOAA/GISS data and software, and he chronicles his often frustrating experiences at his fascinating website. There, detail-seekers will find plenty to satisfy, divided into easily-navigated sections -- some designed specifically for us “geeks,” but most readily approachable to readers of all technical strata.
Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.
Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population...
PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' broad views about corporate spending in elections generally accord with the Supreme Court's decision Thursday that abolished some decades-old restrictions on corporate political activity. Fifty-seven percent of Americans consider campaign donations to be a protected form of free speech, and 55% say corporate and union donations should be treated the same way under the law as donations from individuals are. At the same time, the majority think it is more important to limit campaign donations than to protect this free-speech right.
Overall, 44% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. That’s down four points since Tuesday morning and matches the lowest level of overall approval yet recorded for this President. Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters now disapprove. The number of Democrats who approve has fallen from 84% on Tuesday morning to 78% today (see other recent demographic highlights).
Stern hinted that if House and Senate members don’t move forward with the Senate bill and some kind of fix, they could see union members spending more time on races for governor, perhaps at the expense of their reelection campaigns. “If something significant doesn’t happen in Congress, I hope the legislators appreciate that there are 37 governors races important to our members,” Stern said suggestively.
You know what? Be careful, Bill, about crowing about your success right now because people are going to start calling for the Fairness Doctrine to come back if they feel their point of view is not being adequately represented.
...there's about a 6-7 percent chance that Republicans could actually take control of the Senate, and another 6 percent chance or so that they could wind up with a 50-50 split. On the other hand, there's still a 7-8 percent chance that the Democrats could regain their 60th seat if the national environment shifts back in their direction.
“You know you can’t do it. You’re pandering to the netroots right now. I know what you’re doing.”
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday after the United Nations waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit.
Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month. Developed countries would state their intended cuts by 2020: developing countries would outline how they would curb emissions growth.
But Yvo de Boer, the UN’s senior climate change official, admitted the deadline had in effect been shelved.
"I’m going to take some of your questions but first the cameras have to go so you can tell me the truth."
"With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Senate will have to amend its version of a health-care reform bill before her chamber can pass it.
"I don't think it's possible to pass the Senate bill in the House," Pelosi told reporters after a morning meeting with her caucus. "I don't see the votes for it at this time."
It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America's business. This past year has seen a "perfect storm" in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry's long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama suggested he's open to Congress passing a scaled-back health-care bill, potentially sacrificing much of his signature policy initiative as chaos engulfed Capitol Hill Wednesday.
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The unpopular legislation is needed to allow the federal government to issue bonds to fund programs and prevent a first-time default on obligations. It promises to be a challenging debate for Democrats, who, as the party in power, hold the responsibility for passing the legislation.