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Well, someone in the Obama White House had a nifty idea: wouldn’t Air Force One (well, technically, one of the planes that serves as Air Force One; that name is reserved for the specific aircraft that is carrying the president at the moment) flying around and over New York City, near landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, be a sensational bit of imagery? Wouldn’t video of such flyovers be pure visual splendor?

Travel and hotel groups are braced for a turbulent ride today as stock markets react to fears over the strain of swine flu that was reported to have killed up to 71 people and closed much of public life in Mexico at the weekend. Analysts said that the news would revive memories of the 2002-03 severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak. Although the disease, first noticed in southern China in November 2002, was short-lived, it caused the deaths of 774 people worldwide and had a devastating impact on the Asian economy — particularly in Hong Kong — and on the...

Earlier today, the U.S. declared a public health emergency over the Swine Flu, after confirming 20 cases of the flu spreading to humans in New York, Ohio, Kansas, Texas and California. More than 80 people have died in Mexico from the disease, which has potentially spread to other countries, including Canada and France. Although Federal officials are urging Americans not to panic about the disease, fear of contracting the potentially deadly flu is quickly spreading over Twitter, Google, and blogs across the web. Swine Flu is the top trending topic on Twitter at the moment, with users rapidly tweeting about...

RICHMOND — Ammunition was running out so fast at a gun show late last year in Richmond that one man tried to grab a big can of .223-caliber bullets just as another guy was trying to pay for it. There was an argument. “One guy’s coming over his shoulder trying to grab” his can of 500 rounds of ammo, recalled Josh Golden, a gun and ammo dealer who was selling items at the Richmond Gun Show that day on Nov. 15. “They were his, and he was going to let him know that they were his.” In November, firearms transactions...

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., criticizes mainstream media for not reporting loads of pork in proposed legislation. Is the new Obama administration taking cues from the Bush administration to get Congress to act? It certainly seemed that way to, South Carolina’s junior Republican senator, Jim DeMint. DeMint, speaking Jan. 27 at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., explained the Obama administration will “create crisis and widespread panic” just like its predecessor in order to get Congress to act expeditiously. “I’ve been around long enough to know whenever someone tells me I have to make a decision right now, my response is...

Global aging, combined with plummeting birth rates, is a catastrophically dangerous menace that only a few people seem to be waking up to. You may not be familiar with terms like “global aging” and “demographic winter,” but you will be soon. I've been giving public lectures on the problem of global aging for the past 7 years or so, and my audiences are always shocked and dumbfounded as I explain how the West's ever expanding population of old people (due, thank God, to the ever-improving capabilities of bio-medical science), while a good thing in itself, will soon become a prime...

Methinks the bureaucrats in the Dallas PD need some retraining in common sense: Jill Frederick lives alone. She’s been burglarized twice. So when a stranger banged on her door at 11 p.m., she hit the panic button on her alarm. Sounds reasonable to me. If my daughter lived alone, had been burglarized twice and someone starts beating down her door at 11 p.m., I’d want her to do the same thing. And it obviously worked, as the Dallas PD was there within six minutes and arrested a drunken dude. So, you ask, what is Jill Frederick’s complaint? The panic button...

UPDATED - ALERT - Frightening Text Messages Being Forwarded Around NY Jews January 2, 2009 3:00PM EST: [UPDATE BELOW] With the situation in Gaza deteriorating by the day, and anti-semitism rampant around the world, thousands of NY Jews were frightened upon receiving the following text message which has been going around on Friday afternoon: “A Jewish woman gave a tip to a Muslim taxi driver and out of appreciation he warned her not to go to Manhattan next week Wednesday.” YWN has reached out to high-ranking members of the NYPD, and have stated that although they received the same text...

AGI - Rome, 28 Oct - ''Our nightmare is that in the end the huge consensus that Obama has gained will not transform into votes''. In an interview with DNews a few days before the US presidential elections, David Axelrod, strategist in Barack Obama's campaign said he feared a comeback by Republican McCain. '

/begin my translation N. Korea Incessantly Repeating Kim Jong-il Footage & his Communiqué Two Days in a Row A few dozen radio broadcasts, and on the newspaper headline (Seoul, Yonhap news) Ham Bo-hyun: N. Korean media continues to re-broadcast the report on Kim Jong-il's tour on a military unit and his Communiqué on both Oct. 11 and 12. His health has been the subject of speculation over a month. (The state news agency) KCNA first reported Kim Jong-il's inspection of all-female anti-aircraft company under KPA Unit 821 on early morning of Oct. 11. Since then they had been re-broadcasting it...

London shares dropped more than 400 points in early trading this morning after a seventh day of devastating falls on Wall Street triggered panic selling across Europe and Asia. Within minutes of opening, the FTSE 100 index fell almost 10 per cent to its worst level since 2002, but within 30 minutes shares staged a mild rally which left the index of Britain's leading companies off 253 points at 4050. Bank shares took the brunt of the pain as markets gyrated with Barclays off 15.6 per cent, and HSBC down 4.3 per cent. BP fell 8 per cent and Royal...

October 6, 2008 Markets tumble as banking fears spread across Europe Philippe Naughton Britain's blue chip companies lost £60 billion in value in just a few minutes today as investor confidence crumbled and political leaders battled to avert the threat of recession. The FTSE 100 index of leading shares fell by some 250 points in the first six minutes of trade, following sharp losses across Asia, and drifted down to reach a four-year low of 4,670.9 by late morning, 6 per cent down on Friday's close. For policymakers and central bankers, it was a nightmare start to the week –...

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Barack Obama's allies warn that John McCain's attacks on the Democrat'a character will lead to the political equivalent of mutual assured destruction: fire your big weapon at your own peril.

Not everyone gets the Wall Street-Main Street connection. But they should, because both streets intersect on every block in America. “In the sense that if the credit market dries up on Wall Street, capital will be unavailable on Main Street,” said University of Arizona political science professor Robert Maranto. “So no car loans, house loans, business loans and the like.” In the short run, Maranto explains, there is no reason to panic, but over two years it would lead to higher unemployment. Maranto also reminds that most of Middle America's savings are plowed into the stock markets, “so if the...

Preface. In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do. We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as...

so how many more banks will fry

The financial world breathed easier Friday, as the full force of the U.S. government was employed to stop what had become a full-fledged global panic. Now comes the equally crucial job of protecting taxpayers -- and restoring markets -- after a historic federal intervention. There's little doubt that this week we were watching the modern equivalent of a 1930s bank run. Instead of lining up at bank windows, investors were unloading financial assets on their PCs. Credit markets had seized up, to the point that even routine daily settlements had stopped until banks had the actual securities or cash in...

Much has been written and millions of words expended on the current financial panic, most of it utterly wrong because it's made by people who don't have a clue about the workings of the financial markets. And, yes, that especially includes people in the media. Todd Zywicki, at Volokh posts: Did Eliot Spitzer Contribute to AIG's Demise? to which we get the predictable response for the invincibly ignorant: [Responding to a comment made by someone who works for an AIG insurance subsidiary] Poor you. Maybe if your industry had a few less greedy crooks, you wouldn't have to be so...

Seldom has there been a larger contrast between the style of a candidate and the strategy of his campaign. Barack Obama is cool, firm and permanently unruffled. It is precisely this quality of steadiness that has made him seem a credible prospective president with the thinnest of résumés. But Obama's campaign is rootless, reactive and panicky. At every stage since securing the nomination, it has seemed fearful of missteps and unsure of its own organizing principle. So it has invariably adopted the Democratic conventional wisdom of the moment. Obama's first major decision was his running mate. He could have reinforced...

The retooling of the Obama message is the focus of this Washington Post story: "After a string of tactical successes by McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, over the past two weeks, the Obama campaign sought to regain its footing on Monday. The shift followed a series of internal meetings, including a rare Sunday evening session at the campaign's Chicago headquarters that Obama attended. Advisers reinforced the division of labor in the days ahead: Obama will articulate the campaign's broader message of ‘change’ and outline how the Democratic ticket will govern, while Biden will deliver attacks against...