“Gallup is out with a look today at some key indicators that look troublesome for Barack Obama’s re-election prospects this fall.
There are three main indicators, which Gallup looks at from historical perspective to judge Obama’s prospects this year. They are his approval rating, economic factors and Americans’ view of the direction in which the country is headed.”
Comments »The Obama White House is drawing ridicule for appending the official online biographies of nearly every president over the last century in order to link President Obama’s accomplishments to the former commanders in chief.
The Obama team went into the pages of U.S. presidents dating back to Calvin Coolidge to add friendly looking “Did you know?” fact boxes to the end of their bios. Those additions were used to plug a host of Obama administration initiatives, ranging from the health care overhaul to the so-called “Buffett Rule” to his green-energy policies.
For instance, the following line was added to the official bio of the late President Ronald Reagan: “In a June 28, 1985, speech, Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multimillionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.”
The White House is coming under heavy criticism from conservatives for the changes, and not just to Reagan’s page.
Late Tuesday, the White House defended itself, claiming the staff was merely adding links to other pages.
Read more:
Comments »“President Francois Hollande will spend his first hours as French president huddled in meetings today with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, underscoring rising concern that Greece is headed out of the euro.
Franco-German summits have become such a feature of the European financial crisis that Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Merkel became known by the single name “Merkozy.”
“Greek President Karolos Papoulias will attempt to persuade divided party leaders today to accept his proposal for a government of prominent non-politicians to steer the country and avert new elections as doubts mount that Greece can avoid an exit from the euro area.”
Comments »I understand this has nothing to do with finances. But God I love watching these idiots carve themselves up.
(CNN) – Some people wonder if the black church will punish President Barack Obama for announcing support for same-sex marriage.
Here’s another question:
Why would the black church cite scripture to exclude gays when a similar approach to the Bible was used to enslave their ancestors?
“It’s so unfortunate,” says James Cone, one the nation’s most influential black theologians and author of “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.”
“The literal approach to scripture was used to enslave black people,” he says. “I’ve said many times in black churches that the black church is on the wrong side of history on this. It’s so sad because they were on the right side of history in their own struggle.”
Call it historical irony: Black church leaders arguing against same-sex marriage are making some of the same arguments that supporters of slavery made in the 18th and 19th centuries, some historians say. Both groups adopted a literal reading of the Bible to justify withholding basic rights from a particular group.
Opposition to gay rights is not the standard position of all black churches. Still, while several predominately white mainline denominations have officially accepted gays and lesbians in various forms, the vast majority of black churches still consider homosexuality a sin.
Black church leaders recently helped lead a successful drive to amend North Carolina’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage. The Rev. Fred Robinson, a black pastor in Charlotte, says most black churchgoers aren’t hypocrites. They take scripture, and sin, seriously.
“Black people are not confused,” Robinson says. “If you look at the scriptures that oppose homosexuality, Old and New Testament, they are clearer cut than the ones people used to justify slavery.”
Read the backstabbing, here:
Comments »“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was defeated in Germany’s most populous state in an election that helped the Social Democrats tighten their grip on the country’s regional governments.
The SPD, the main opposition party nationally, increased its vote share in yesterday’s ballot in North Rhine-Westphalia, enabling Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft to return to power at the head of a government with the Greens in the state capital Dusseldorf. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union suffered its worst score since World War II.”
Comments »“Greece’s biggest anti-bailout party, Syriza, said for the second time in as many days that it won’t join a unity government, pushing the country closer to new elections that have sparked concerns about a euro-area exit.
“Syriza won’t betray the Greek people,” leader Alexis Tsipras said in statements televised on state-run NET TV after a meeting brokered by President Karolos Papoulias between the party and the leaders of the New Democracy and Pasok parties. “We are being asked to agree to the destruction of Greek society.”
Comments »The Californian deficit estimate is adjusted 4 months after it was made to be 58% higher than previously guessed. What would you guess is Governor Brown’s solution to this crisis?
Read the article here.
Comments »President Barack Obama has threatened to veto a Department of Justice appropriations bill House Republicans passed because, among other things, it includes a provision that blocks a gun control law his administration used Operation Fast and Furious to pass.
The Obama administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wrote, and began implementing, a new rule that would require gun dealers in the four U.S. states that border Mexico to report sales of multiple semi-automatic rifles to the ATF.
In the 2013 fiscal year budget for the Department of Justice and related agencies, House Republicans inserted a rider, or condition, that would force the ATF to not implement that rule.
In a statement the White House released upon receiving the House appropriations bill, the administration threatened it would veto the legislation because of that ATF rider, among other things.
In the statement, the White House called that rider blocking the ATF rule’s implementation one of the few it “strongly opposes” because the Obama administration thinks it represents “problematic policy and language riders that have no place in funding legislation.”
Several House Republicans have charged that the Obama administration had an anti-gun agenda when it carried out Fast and Furious, and are particularly wary of Attorney General Eric Holder, who once expressed the need to “brainwash” the American people into disliking firearm ownership.
Read more:
Comments »The dispute between China and the Philippines over the countries’ maritime boundaries seems to have moved to a much more dangerous level — and could soon include the United States.
China is now warning of a potential war with its Asian neighbor.
“No matter how willing we are to discuss the issue, the current Philippine leadership is intent on pressing us into a corner where there is no other option left but the use of arms,” said an editorial in the state-controlled China Daily newspaper.
The dispute is over a small group of islands called the Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines that both nations claim as their territory.
Last month, a tense standoff took place between navies of both countries, after military vessels from the Philippines tried to stop a Chinese fishing fleet from entering the territory.
Non-military ships from both nations remain in the area to enforce their claim.
The shoal is about 140 miles from the coastline of the Philippines, which insists its claim is supported by international law.
The nearest Chinese-controlled land mass is several hundred miles away.
But China claims most of the South China Sea. Its claim spreads far to the southeast and includes waters very close to other Asian nations, such as Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
It is thought the South China Sea has vast quantities of oil and gas beneath it and all of these nations want to stake their claim.
It’s also a widely perceived as a potential flashpoint between the countries; it is also a major international waterway of the United States, which uses it to have its fleets pass through to the Middle East.
China announced today it was suspending all tours of the Philippines by Chinese nationals because of the risk, it says, for their safety.
Read more:
Comments »“They have spent less time in the Oval Office than their conservative counterparts over the last five decades, but Democratic presidents have presided over better private sector job growth than Republicans.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ6_Ey_MJV4&feature=g-all-lik 603 500]
Comments »ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos said Wednesday there has been no success so far in negotiations to form a coalition government after weekend elections resulted in a deadlock.
Venizelos, a former finance minister whose PASOK party came in third with 13.18 percent, is next in line to take over the mandate of trying to cobble together a coalition and said he would continue the efforts when he is handed the task on Thursday.
Alexis Tsipras, head of the Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, was leading the talks on Wednesday, and met with Venizelos as well as the heads of other parties on the right and left of the political spectrum. Tsipras has been seeking support for a left-wing government that will reject the terms of Greece’s international bailout — which critics say will lead the country out of the euro.
Sunday’s election result was a severe blow to PASOK, which has dominated Greek politics along with the rival conservatives New Democracy for four decades and stormed to victory with a landslide in the previous elections in 2009.
Its popularity suffered from the harsh austerity measures it imposed in return for two multibillion euro international bailouts. The measures, which included salary and pension cuts and repeated tax hikes, have left Greece in a fifth year of recession.
Venizelos insisted it was imperative for Greece to remain within Europe’s joint currency.
“Mr. Tsipras asked me if we would address the possibility of supporting a unity government that would freeze the process (of austerity) … I answered that the country has no time to waste and we cannot examine any option that would prolong the recession,” Venizelos said.
“The vast majority of the country wishes to remain in the euro,” he added. “And exit from the euro would result in mass poverty, a loss of value of property, income and prospects. Greece would lose many decades.”
Tsipras met later with conservative New Democracy head Antonis Samaras, who came first in Sunday’s polls with 18.85 percent of the vote and 108 seats in the 300-member parliament.
Given that the Communist Party refuses to join any government and no parties are talking to the extreme right Golden Dawn, which won 21 seats, no coalition can be formed without Samaras.
But the views between him and the radical left remain as wide apart as ever.
Read full story here:
Comments »“Egypt’s largest daily newspaper, Ahram, is reporting that an administrative court has halted Egypt’s presidential elections.
The elections, the first since the fall of former leader Mubarak, were due to be held on the 23 and 24 of this month, but had been marred by political infighting and street violence.
The ruling appears to concern the constitutionality of the election.”
Comments »“Go away, American millionaires.
That’s what some of the world’s largest wealth-management firms are saying ahead of Washington’s implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Singapore Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (DBS) all say they have turned away business.”
Comments »European stocks dropped to an almost four-month low as investors awaited a resolution to the political impasse in Greece and as Spanish credit risk surged. U.S. index futures and Asian shares also fell.
Bankia SA led a selloff in Spanish banks as the country’s 10-year bond yield climbed above 6 percent. Kloeckner & Co. and Mediaset SpA (MS) both plunged more than 8 percent after reporting first-quarter results. ING Groep NV and Carlsberg A/S (CARLA) paced advancing shares.
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