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Later this fall, President Obama will sign into law a landmark health-reform bill. Then the hard part begins. Barack Obama was advised early in his presidency to focus on just one thing at a time and postpone health care for another year. The advice was pressed on him not just from outside observers but from trusted aides inside the White House. He rejected it—and for that reason, among others, the health reform that's been delayed for a century, and which he will sign into law this fall, will carry his indelible stamp. Afterward, though, there will be no period of...

Down at the Chinese outlet store in Albany known as Wal-Mart, Chinese tires have so successfully undercut U.S.-made tires that the Cooper Tire factory in that south Georgia town had to shut down. Twenty-one hundred Georgians lost their jobs. The tale of Cooper Tire and what it portends is told in last week's Washington Post by Peter Whoriskey. How could tires made on the other side of the world, then shipped to Albany, be sold for less than tires made in Albany? Here's how. At Cooper Tire, the wages were $18 to $21 per hour. In China, they are a...

The financial system and economy are coming back to life. So who's going to pay TARP back and who isn't? As the first anniversary of the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program approaches, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has a lot to be happy about. Thursday, facing the congressional panel charged with overseeing the TARP funds, Geithner reminded them that when he took office, the Treasury had given $240 billion to banks. Since then, $70 billion has come back as the healthiest banks have begun to repay taxpayers. He estimates banks will repay another $50 billion over the next 12...

Hint Lipstick http://www.thedailyjabber.com/?p=1019

The Somali pirates preying on shipping in the Gulf of Aden and more recently the Indian Ocean are zeroed in on their targets by well-placed informers in London, a world center for shipbroking and insurance, using satellite phones, according to a European military intelligence report. The document, which was obtained by Cadena SER, a Spanish radio station, says the "consultants" in London help the pirates select their targets, providing data on the ships' cargoes and courses... The U.N. International Maritime Bureau reported this month that there had been a dramatic surge in piracy in the waters of the Horn of...

TORONTO — Authorities in Iran have arrested at least seven children and grandchildren of senior clerics in the religious city of Qum and threatened to arrest the son of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, the powerful cleric and a former president, in what appeared to be fresh pressure on religious leaders who sympathize with the opposition. The arrests, reported by several opposition Web sites on Tuesday but apparently carried out on Monday, coincided with a harsh rebuke of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, from a senior cleric who is an outspoken dissident, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who urged colleagues to support the...

Numbers released for Monday night.., plus Foxnews #3 on all of cable (that's everything) CNN #26, MS-DNC #21

Rare footage from the terrace of the US Capitol building and time lapse footage of protesters marching down Pennsylvania Avenue illustrate the gathering of people who attended the March on Washington on September 12, 2009. Sophia Elena reporting from Washington D.C. as a large crowd gathered at Freedom Plaza and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the US Capitol.

The Incredible Story Of Maria Esperanza By Michael H. BrownShe is widely regarded as the greatest living mystic. The miracles that surround her are vast -- among the best documented in Church history. Not since Padre Pio, the famous Italian priest now set for canonization, has there been a thaumaturge,  a "wonderworker," of her scale. She's a seer. She's a healer. She's a stigmatist. She often exudes an inexplicably beautiful fragrance. Some even claim to have seen her in levitation. I speak here of Maria Esperanza from Venezuela. We have had a number of stories about her, but never her background....

At a small health care briefing put on by several House Republicans, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) argued that the president had lost momentum on health care reform because Americans didn’t trust him when he talked about it. “What he’s trying to do is boost up the Democrats,” said Bachmann. “The people aren’t listening to him the way that they did before. They were hanging on his every word [before].” Last week, said Bachmann, was “the first time I felt like we were going to win this thing. I sensed it when the president was in Minnesota. There were a lot...

<p>NEW YORK - President Barack Obama is visiting late night TV talk show host David Letterman on Monday, part of a media blitz to sell his health care plan.</p> <p>TV network CBS says it would make the first visit ever by a sitting president to Letterman's "Late Show."</p>

Stem cells have a unique ability: when they divide, they can either give rise to more stem cells, or to a variety of specialised cell types. In both mice and humans, a layer of cells at the base of the skin contains stem cells that can develop into the specialised cells in the layers above. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, in collaboration with colleagues at the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas (CIEMAT) in Madrid, have discovered two proteins that control when and how these stem cells switch to being skin cells. The findings,...

John Stewart had his best segment ever trashing the MSM over their how some kids scooped them to find out about corruption at ACORN. No video up yet. Here are some quotes: "I'm sure Acorn has 'a line'...please tell me 13 Salvadorian sex slaves is 'the line'" "The bad news, Acorn appears to be a corrupt organization that aides and abets criminals, and gets millions of dollars in taxpayer money, the good news is, it seems to be very well run" "Which intrepid journalist broke this story, 60 minutes, AP?" "Where were the real reporters on this story. You know...

Shouldn't the man who played "gotcha" with Sarah Palin be up to speed on this big news story? After all, that's his job!Remember last fall when ABC's Charlie Gibson looked down his nose at Governor Sarah Palin and tried to sound superior when asking about the Bush doctrine which the Washington Post admits has several definitions? Well, once again it appears Charlie hasn't been doing his homework. He's clueless or indifferent to the biggest corruption story to break yet in the first months of the Obama Administration: AUDIO: AT SITE Don Wade of 890 WLS radio's Wade and Roma show...

According to MSNBC's Chris Matthews, if Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford loses Tuesday, you can blame it on white conservatives. On Sunday morning, as he appeared in a segment hosted by Alex Witt, Matthews chided whites for an unwillingness to vote for black politicians, contending that "blacks vote for whites," but "whites don't vote for blacks." Matthews added that in states with large black populations, fear leads whites to become conservative Republicans. Matthews: "The larger the black population, where the whites are afraid historically, and in Deep South states, they tend to become very conservative Republican out of fear, whatever,...

The campaign by ColorOfChange.org to get companies to boycott Glenn Beck’s Fox News program has been going on for more than a month, and 62 companies have pledged their support and refused to advertise on the program. That is a victory on one level. Yet, despite a press release yesterday saying the contrary, Fox News continues to be unaffected financially by the boycott. The release was accompanied by a Huffington Post blog by the group’s founder, James Rucker. From the release: The advertising boycott of Glenn Beck has cost the controversial host over half of his estimated advertising revenue since...

1984’s politically incorrect Red Dawn The nation is mourning Patrick Swayze, who passed away yesterday at age 57 after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Everyone remembers his performances in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, but few if any obituaries will commemorate his role in one of the most politically incorrect films of the last 25 years: Red Dawn.Leftists have always despised, and still revile, the film. For a quarter-century, the far-Left has claimed Ronald Reagan brainwashed the nation’s youth with this movie. Less than a year ago, David Plotz was so troubled by it that he assailed it in...

“How big is it?” is certainly one of the world’s most dreaded questions. In fact, after the Million Man March in 1995, Congress restricted the National Park Service from even making estimates — a restriction that was maintained for 14 years and then quietly rescinded this January for the Obama inauguration. I’m talking about crowds, of course. I can’t take you people anywhere. There have been a lot of estimates, from the “official” one of 60 to 70 thousand, up to the rumored 2 million. Let’s see if we can make a plausible estimate with some rigor and some idea...

Operation Rescue Says It's Broke, May Shut Anti-abortion group reeling from fallout over doctor slaying, economy DAVE WEAVER / AP file Operation Rescue's Troy Newman says the organization is facing a "major financial crisis," and is close to shutting down without emergency donations. Sept . 15, 2009 WICHITA, Kan. - Operation Rescue, one of the nation's highest-profile groups in the anti-abortion movement, has told its supporters it is facing a "major financial crisis" and is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon. The group's president, Troy Newman, blamed the economic downturn for its money woes in a...

On several occasions this year, President Obama has expressed with certain bravado a threat to "call out" anyone who would undermine his reform efforts. The problem is that the Ivy League gentleman from Hawaii appears not to have mastered this coarsened art of the streetwise rebuke and, as a result, he tends to come off as bluffing. "If you misrepresent what's in this [health care] plan, we will call you out," Obama told a joint session of Congress last week. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) apparently knew better. He not only misrepresented the plan but also interrupted Obama's speech to call...