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Barack Obama's first visit to Asia since his inauguration was one of the most disappointing trips by any U.S. president to the region in decades, especially given media-generated expectations that "Obamamania" would make it yet another triumphal progression. It was a journey of startlingly few concrete accomplishments, demonstrable proof that neither personal popularity nor media deference really means much in the hard world of international affairs. The contrast between Asia's reception for Obama and Europe's is significant. Although considered a global phenomenon, Obamamania's real center is Europe. There, Mr. Obama reigns as a "post-American" president, a multilateralist carbon copy of...

THOMSON, Ill., Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Thousands of jobs would be created in Illinois if the U.S. government purchases a nearly empty prison there to house terror detainees, a study indicates. The study, performed by the Obama White House Council of Economic Advisers and obtained by The Chicago Sun-Times, asserted that 2,290 to 2,960 jobs would be created in and around Thomson, Ill., in the first year after its conversion to house some of the prisoners now held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, the newspaper reported Sunday. Local residents in the Illinois-Iowa border town would be "good candidates"...

A lawyer for one of the five men facing trial for the Sept. 11 attacks says the men plan to plead not guilty and use the trial venue to express their political views. Attorney Scott Fenstermaker said his client Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali and the others will not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but will tell the jury "why they did it." He said that the men will explain "their assessment of American foreign policy." Fenstermaker met with Ali last week at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has not spoken with the others but said...

A number of US troops have been injured when an Afghan soldier opened fire at their convoy in Khost province, the third such accident in less than two months. Local officials in eastern Afghanistan announced on Sunday that an Afghan soldier opened fire on a US convoy injuring several US troops late Saturday, IRNA reported. The officials who wanted to remain unnamed added that the Afghan soldier was also injured during the incident. However, it was not clear whether he was shot by the US soldiers or himself. This is the third time such an accident has happened in the...

The Talk Shows Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Kit Bond, R-Mo., Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Bernadine Healy, former director of the National Institutes of Health.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Nancy Brinker, founder of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., Chuck U. Schumer, D-N.Y.THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla....

WASHINGTON – Invoking the memory of Edward M. Kennedy, Democrats united Saturday night to push historic health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama. There was not a vote to spare. The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a bruising, full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who lack it, crack down on insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care nationally. The spectator galleries...

ON Fox News now, Vote is underway!!!

Another e-mail from info@barackobama.com hit my inbox yesterday. The subject: Sarah Palin. It begins: "Right now, Sarah Palin is on a highly publicized, nationwide book tour, attacking President Obama and his plan for health reform at every turn." The mail goes on to say "It's dangerous. Remember, this is the person who coined the term "Death Panels" -- and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists.""Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform." "So...

Few details emerged Saturday on a reported threat at Fort Benning. Thursday a solider found a suspicious package and a note threatening a massacre similar to the Nov. 5 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, Elsie Jackson, post spokeswoman at Fort Benning confirmed Saturday. The anonymous note and package -- reported by The Army Times as a box of 20 hollow-point bullets -- were found Thursday morning outside a motor pool area at Fort Benning, located near Columbus. "There may be an update Monday," said Jackson Saturday. "But at this time there is an ongoing investigation of the incident." The discovery...

Democrats on Saturday clinched the votes needed to advance the Senate's version of President Obama's health care overhaul to the floor for a historic debate scheduled to begin shortly after 8 p.m..

C-SPAN 2 is carrying the Senate floor debate live this afternoon.The Democrats control the floor right now. Earlier, Republican Senators Judd Gregg, Kit Bond, Jeff Sessions and David Vitter gave good speeches and dialogues on the budget-busting effects of ObamaCare.Maria Cantwell is speaking now. Mary Landrieu is excpected to speak shortly.The cloture vote is scheduled for 8 p.m. EST tonight.

Like the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal, this is the gift that goes on giving. It won’t, unfortunately, derail Copenhagen (too many vested interests involved) or cause any of our many political parties to start talking sense on “Climate change”. But what it does demonstrate is the growing level of public scepticism towards Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. That’s why, for example, this story is the single most read item on today’s Telegraph website. [...] But in the case of “Climate Change”, the MSM has been caught with its trousers down. The reason it has been so ill-equipped to report...

BEIJING — An explosion at a coal mine in northeast China early Saturday killed 31 workers and left 82 trapped, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) said, the latest deadly incident to hit the industry. The blast happened at 2:30 am (1830 GMT Friday) at a mine in Heilongjiang province, according to a statement issued by the State Administration of Work Safety. A total of 528 miners were working in the pit, near Hegang City, when the blast occurred, the state administration said. The previous toll given by CCTV was 15 dead and 114 trapped. The mine is owned by the...

WASHINGTON — First mammograms. Now -- in an apparent coincidence -- Pap smears. New guidelines by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say most women in their 20s can have a Pap smear every two years instead of annually to catch slow-growing cervical cancer. The change comes amid a separate debate over when regular mammograms to detect breast cancer should begin...

Read the full billRead the tax revenue score from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) Read the budget and tax score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) PDF of this DocumentIndividual Mandate Tax (Page 324/Sec. 1501/$8 bil): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the following schedule (capped at 8 percent of income): ==============> Check out this important piece, at ATR.org...

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Nov. 20, 2009) — A Missouri National Guardsman in training to become a military truck driver faces charges of making a terrorist threat in a school near Whiteman Air Force Base. According to court records, the trainee, Pfc. Michael John Frederick, 19, went into a Sedalia high school during a Saturday evening event and told the superintendent that the Army had told him to warn area schools that escaped prisoners might be trying to kidnap students. Frederick was wearing his military uniform when he made his warning about escaped inmates. However, there were no escaped inmates...

GLOBAL WARMING JUNK SCIENCE PROVEN A CONSPIRACY—- ManBearPig Is Finally Dead! I’m serial! Recently “discovered” classified emails and files prove that the junk scientists behind the global warming movement knowingly perpetrated a fraud on the global community. The files were posted on the internet– HERE. The Telegraph reported: If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka...

Heard on CNN: Hasan conversant and aware of his charges, coherent. Paralysed from waist down. Targeted only soldiers, passed over civilians. Shot one soldier 3 times until he fell, then shot him 3 more times. Soldier survived.

John McCain's problems inside his own party were hardly overcome by his place as its nominee, Rasmussen reports. The new poll shows McCain up just two points, 45% to 43%, in a hypothetical contest with former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, now a popular local radio talker, who's mulling a bid.

A Russian Orthodox priest, Fr. Daniel Sysoyev, who carried out missionary work among immigrants from ex-Soviet republics, many of them Muslims, received over a dozen death threats before his murder on Thursday, a Russian paper said. Fr. Daniel of St. Thomas Church in Moscow foresaw his death, writing in his internet diary that he had received telephone threats from Muslims. Fr. Daniel’s evening ‘talks’ for inquirers included several especially designed for Muslims.

President Obama's approval rating in the Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index is now at -14, the third straight day it has been at that number. That is equal to the lowest rating recorded during the Obama Presidency. The "Presidential Approval Index" is figured based on those who "strongly approve" of the job Obama is doing, minus those who "strongly disapprove" of his performance. Today, that stands at 27%-41%. Obama's overall approval rating is at 47%-52%.

Gallup Daily tracking results just in. Obama will be below 50% for the first time... Collection of various articles

Days after controversy erupted over new breast cancer screening guidelines, a US health group has said women should wait longer to get their first cervical cancer test. The New York Times reported Friday that the American College of Obstetricians is now advising women to wait until age 21 to get their first Pap smear. The advice is intended to cut down on unnecessary testing and reduce the risk of harmful invasive procedures to remove non-cancerous lesions that may show up on tests but often disappear if left alone, the group said. The new recommendations overturn previous guidance, which suggested women...

UPDATE: Response from CRU in interview with another website, see end of this post. The details on this are still sketchy, we’ll probably never know what went on. But it appears that University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit has been hacked and many many files have been released by the hacker or person unknown. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/annrep93/cru.jpg UPDATED: Original image was for Met Office – corrected This image source: www.cru.uea.ac.uk I’m currently traveling and writing this from an airport, but here is what I know so far: An unknown person put postings on some climate skeptic websites that advertised an FTP...

Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)Chief of Staff Joan Ohashi joan_ohashi@akaka.senate.gov Communications Director Jon Yoshimura jon_yoshimura@akaka.senate.gov Press Secretary Jesse Broder Van Dyke jesse_brodervandyke@akaka.senate.gov Legislative Director Jennifer Tyree jennifer_tyree@akaka.senate.gov Deputy Legislative Director Matt Pippin matt_pippin@akaka.senate.gov Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana)Chief of Staff Jon Selib jon_selib@baucus.senate.gov Communications Director Tyler Ryan “Ty” Matsdorf tyler_matsdorf@baucus.senate.gov Press Secretary Carolyn Bunce carolyn_bunce@baucus.senate.gov Legislative Director Paul Stockton Wilkins paul_wilkins@baucus.senate.gov Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana)Chief of Staff Charles Salem charlie_salem@bayh.senate.gov Deputy Chief of Staff Linda Moore Forbes linda_forbes@bayh.senate.gov Communications Director Eric D. Kleiman eric_kleiman@bayh.senate.gov Press Secretary Brian Weiss brian_weiss@bayh.senate.gov Counsel Jesse Gabriel jesse_gabriel@bayh.senate.gov Fax: (202) 228-1377 Legislative Director Jayme Roth jayme_roth@bayh.senate.gov Legislative...

The Army has guidelines on how to deal with racist views and actions within the ranks, but none on how to deal with Islamic jihadism, a former Army vice chief of staff told Congress on Thursday. Retired Army Gen. John M. Keane said this absence of guidance fostered a politically correct reluctance to investigate the man accused in the Fort Hood shootings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. A military pamphlet created after the 1995 racially motivated shootings at Fort Bragg is the intended guidebook on how to deal with extremist activities and prohibited conduct but is mostly focused on white supremacist...

8.15 PM UPDATE: The Hadley CRU director admits the emails seem to be genuine: The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight ..."It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails."… TGIF asked Jones about the controversial email discussing “hiding the decline”, and Jones explained what he was trying to say…. So the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the...

Attorney General Eric Holder lacks authority to make a decision on moving terror detainees to civilian courts for trial, one of his predecessors said Wednesday. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who held his position during the Bush administration from 2001-2005, said that Holder lacked the legal standing to decide to move alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other terror detainees to federal courts in New York City to stand trial. >p> "The attorney general doesn't have the authority to mandate that the secretary of Defense turn somebody over to him and yield jurisdiction so that something that would have...

"Stop portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a suicide bomber or more Muslims will become suicide bombers and murder you blasphemers." That's pretty much what Algeria's Ambassador to the U.N., Idriss Jazairy, who serves as chairman of the U.N.'s Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards told the Associated Press in an interview about efforts by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to pass a U.N. treaty banning blasphemy against Islam.The exact quote from the AP:"If we keep hitting this glass wall and say there's nothing you can do about Islamophobia — you can do something about anti-Semitism but Islamophobia is...

European Union leaders have named two relatively unknowns to be the first permanent EU president and foreign minister. Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy will be the new president and EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton was appointed foreign policy chief. Both names were approved by consensus Thursday at a summit in Brussels. Diplomats say both are compromise candidates with little foreign policy experience. Britain had been insisting on a famous name - specifically former British Prime Minster Tony Blair - to be president. Other members wanted someone who they say would be less divisive as the EU looks for a...

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

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn is backing off his threat to require that the Senate read the 2,074-page health care bill because some GOP colleagues aren't supporting the effort. The Oklahoma lawmaker said there's uncertainty about whether reading the bill during Thanksgiving week would be productive. He also said that if the Republicans do decide to tie up the Senate for the dozens of hours it would take, six GOP colleagues have committed to pitching in on reading duty.

WASHINGTON — The Senate will hold its first vote on health care legislation on Saturday night and Democrats will need 60 votes to prevail.Majority Leader Harry Reid announced the schedule on the Senate floor, one day after unveiling a nearly $1 trillion bill to expand health coverage.Republicans have vowed to block passage of the measure, and Democrats must put up 60 votes to clear the way for a lengthy debate next month.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) officially joined Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) as the second member of the Democratic Conference to threaten a filibuster of the Senate’s health care reform bill. http://bit.ly/2yYu8c

A top federal health official said Wednesday that the controversial new guidelines for breast cancer screening do not represent government policy, as the Obama administration sought to keep the debate over mammograms from undermining the prospects for health-care reform. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in a written statement, said the new guidelines had "caused a great deal of confusion and worry among women and their families across this country," and she stressed that they were issued by "an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who . . . do not set federal policy and . . ....

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani has decided not to run for governor next year - but will run for U.S. Senate instead, sources told the Daily News. A source familiar with Giuliani's thinking said the failed presidential candidate has been telling people he plans to run against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010 to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary Clinton's term.

by Dana Blanton , FOXNews.com President Obama's approval rating has hit a new low of 46 percent, even as a majority of Americans says he is providing the kind of leadership they expected. print email share recommend (2) President Obama's approval rating has hit a new low of 46 percent, according to a FOX News poll released Thursday. An equal number -- 46 percent -- disapprove of the job he's doing. Breaking down the numbers by political party shows how sharply split American voters are over the president's job performance. While 85 percent of Democrats approve of their party leader,...

Because article is so short, mainly just posting the link... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19144921.htm "Uniformed men, apparently from the Venezuelan army, arrived in trucks on the Venezuelan side at two pedestrian bridges that link communities on both sides ... and then proceeded to dynamite them," Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said.

Army officials plan to prevent media from covering Sarah Palin's appearance at Fort Bragg on Monday, saying they fear the event will turn into political grandstanding against President Barack Obama. Fort Bragg spokesman Tom McCollum told The Associated Press on Thursday that Army officials had decided to keep media away from Palin's book promotion at the North Carolina base. SNIP McCollum said the Army did not want the event to become a platform for Palin supporters to express political opinions "directed against the commander in chief."

TAMPA - Business owners in Florida are about to get hit with a big tax hike: starting January 1st, all Florida businesses will have to pay skyrocketing unemployment compensation taxes to replenish the unemployment compensation trust fund.

The government watchdog overseeing economic stimulus spending says the White House was too quick to take credit for saving or creating 640,000 jobs. The White House trumpeted job figures released last month, saying they proved the administration is on track to save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year.

Medford teacher Shirley Katz, who was denied permission to take her handgun to South Medford High School, has lost her appeal to the Oregon Court of Appeals. The court opinion, issued Wednesday by Judge Jack Landau, upheld a November 2007 decision by the Jackson County Circuit Court that affirmed the Medford School District's authority to prohibit employees from carrying firearms on school grounds.

DEVELOPING: An FAA computer glitch is causing flights to be delayed and canceled nationwide Thursday. The Federal Aviation Administration's computer systems are experiencing problems retrieving flight plans, a spokeswoman said. "We are having a problem processing flight plan information," the FAA's Kathleen Bergen explained in a prepared statement. "We are investigating the cause of the problem. We are processing flight plans manually and expect some delays."

Daring soldier was awarded Medal of HonorBy Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 18, 2009 Lewis L. Millett, 88, a career Army officer who was briefly and somewhat misleadingly court-martialed for desertion during World War II and went on to receive the Medal of Honor for leading a bayonet charge during the Korean War, died Nov. 14 at a veterans hospital in Loma Linda, Calif. He had congestive heart failure. Col. Millett, who sported a red handlebar mustache, cut an audacious and unconventional path during his 35 years of military service. He led daring attacks in two wars...

One of the few concrete signs of cooperation to emerge from this week's U.S.-China summit could boost Beijing's drive to become a global aircraft maker. President Barack Obama pledged Tuesday to push for closer technical collaboration and eventual U.S. safety approval for China's ARJ21 commuter jet. That amounts to both a symbolic and practical step to counter Beijing's growing frustration with U.S. aviation policy and U.S. restrictions on the purchase of certain technologies. The high-profile U.S. initiative is especially significant because China's own safety regulators are still a year or more away from approving the 70-to-100-passenger aircraft being developed by...

BEIJING, Nov 18 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid prepared to unveil long-awaited healthcare overhaul legislation on Wednesday, with the first test vote on the package expected by the end of the week. The healthcare reform bill, President Barack Obama's top domestic priority, has been delayed in the Senate for weeks as Reid waited for cost estimates and searched for an approach that can win the 60 votes needed to overcome Republican procedural hurdles. Senate Democrats have scheduled a 5 p.m. EST meeting in which Reid will brief them on the bill, and on the cost estimates provided by the nonpartisan...

AUSTIN, Minn. — State officials say an unknown number of people have died in a southern Minnesota tour bus crash. Authorities earlier said as many as 22 people were hurt in the crash about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday on Interstate 90 west of Austin. Department of Public Safety spokesman Andy Skoogman says "there are some fatalities" from the crash. He was en route to the scene and said information was still being gathered. The Post-Bulletin of Rochester identified the bus as operated by Strain Bus Line Motorcoach Tours in Rochester. An employee who answered the phone at Strain would not give...

Measure would add coverage for 31 million, reduce deficit over 10 years Health care legislation heading for the Senate floor this week would extend coverage to 31 million uninsured Americans at a cost of $849 billion over a decade, according to congressional budget experts. As rank-and-file Democrats gathered Wednesday to learn details of the long-awaited bill, the Congressional Budget Office also estimated the legislation would reduce federal deficits by a total of $127 billion over that decade, NBC News reported. The budget agency also projected that the legislation would cover 94 percent of Americans. The political stakes were enormous...

<p>Contact your Senators and let them know what you think!</p> <p>U.S. veterans or subsidies for United Nations (U.N.) bureaucracy.</p>