via cbsnews.com
Sunday, July 31, 2011
One-of-a-kind transparent Ghost Car sold at auction | Reuters
(Reuters) - Some car enthusiasts prefer black - some red. But a buyer at a Michigan auction Saturday got a truly one-of-a-kind color -- transparent.
The 1939 Pontiac Deluxe Six "Ghost Car," first displayed at the New York World's Fair and later at the Smithsonian Institution, was sold Saturday for $308,000.
Originally built for $25,000, the car with a Plexiglas body was the first transparent car built in America. Another was built the following year, but its whereabouts are unknown.
via reuters.com
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Dems, GOP still at loggerheads as clock ticks - Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (AP) — The GOP-controlled House and the Democratic Senate remain at loggerheads over debt legislation required to avoid a first-ever default on U.S. financial obligations as lawmakers and the White House head into a pressure-packed weekend in search of compromise.
A week of extraordinary partisanship was capped by a power play by Senate Democrats, who killed a House-passed debt limit increase and budget-cutting bill Friday night less than two hours after it squeaked through the House. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., set up a test vote for the wee hours of Sunday morning to break a GOP filibuster.
Before then, however, the House was set to even the score by voting Saturday to reject an alternative measure by Reid even before the Senate has taken it up.
Democrats, Republicans and the White House, meanwhile, are expected to be deep in conversation in hopes of a potential compromise. Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is likely to play a pivotal role.
"There is very little time" President Barack Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. He called for an end to political gamesmanship, saying "the time for compromise on behalf of the American people is now."
The outcome of the weekend endgame was anything but clear as Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over how to force lawmakers to come up with additional budget savings later this year beyond the almost $1 trillion in agency budget cuts over the coming decade that they basically agree on.
After a brutal week on Wall Street — investors lost hundreds of billions of dollars as the markets lost ground every day — pressure is intense to produce an accord before the opening bell on Monday.
The House measure squeaked through on a 218-210 vote, with 22 Republicans joining united Democrats in opposing the GOP measure, which pairs an immediate $900 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority along with $917 billion in spending cuts spread over the coming decade.
Friday's roll call came after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, had been forced to call off a vote slated for Thursday in the face of tea party opposition to the measure. He added a provision requiring that a second, up to $1.6 trillion debt increase be conditioned on House and Senate passage of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, which would require an unrealistic two-thirds vote by each chamber to send it to the states for ratification.
Boehner's move only cemented Democratic opposition to the measure and complicated prospects for a weekend compromise that could clear both houses and win Obama's signature by next Tuesday's deadline. And by appeasing the tea party by adding the balanced-budget amendment poison pill, Boehner seemed to hand endgame leverage to Reid and Obama.
Boehner said the House bill — before the addition of the balanced-budget amendment — mirrored an agreement worked out with Reid last weekend.
"Now the bill before us still isn't perfect," Boehner said as he closed debate. "It's imperfect because it reflects an honest and sincere effort to end this crisis by sending a bill over to the Senate that at one time was agreed to by the bipartisan leadership of the United States Senate."
Still, as soon as the measure reached the Senate side of the Capitol, Senate Democrats scuttled the measure without so much as a debate on its merits. The vote was 59-41, with all Democrats, two independents and six Republicans joining in opposition.
Reid alternative measure would raise the debt limit by up to $2.4 trillion, enough to a demand by Obama that the increase be sufficient that Congress doesn't have to wrestle with it again until 2013.
Administration officials say that without legislation in place by the end of Tuesday, the Treasury will no longer be able to pay all its bills. The result could inflict significant damage on the economy, they add, causing interest rates to rise and financial markets to sink.
Executives from the country's biggest banks met with U.S. Treasury officials to discuss how debt auctions will be handled if Congress fails to raise the borrowing limit before Tuesday's deadline.
But White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration did not plan to provide the public with details Friday on how the government would prioritize payments.
The day's economic news wasn't very upbeat to begin with — an economy that grew at an annual rate of only 1.3 percent in the second quarter of the year.
At the White House, Obama cited the potential toll on the economy as he urged lawmakers to find a way out of gridlock.
He said that for all the partisanship, the two sides were not that far apart. Both agree on initial spending cuts to take effect in exchange for an increase in the debt limit, he said, as well as on a way to consider additional reductions in government benefit programs in the coming months.
"And if we need to put in place some kind of enforcement mechanism to hold us all accountable for making these reforms, I'll support that, too, if it's done in a smart and balanced way," Obama said.
via news.yahoo.com
Friday, July 29, 2011
Lawmakers' votes open way for final US debt push | Reuters
(Reuters) - Lawmakers opened the way on Friday for a last-ditch bid for a possible bipartisan compromise to avert a crippling national default just four days before the deadline to raise the country's debt ceiling.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a Republican deficit-cutting plan and the Democratic-led Senate quickly rejected it -- moves that underscored the ideological divide but also cleared a path to start negotiating a deal.
The back-to-back votes broke weeks of political inertia in efforts to lift the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt limit by Tuesday after which the world's largest economy will be unable to pay all of its bills, the government says.
Delays and procedural hurdles will still make it all but impossible for Congress to strike a deal and send it to Obama's desk until the 11th hour, injecting a dangerous level of uncertainty into already rattled global financial markets.
via reuters.com
They've Lost That Lovin' Feeling
The Republican establishment reasserted itself this week, and good thing, too, because the establishment was right. It said Republicans in the House should back and pass the Boehner bill on the debt ceiling because it goes in the right directions, contains spending cuts but not taxes, and is viable. So accept victory, avert crisis, and get it to the Senate.
The establishment was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledge reality, respect it, and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of—careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens. They were mostly led by men and women who had never been foreclosed on and who assumed good luck, especially unearned good luck, would continue. They were fools, and they lost control of their party when the tea party rose up, rebuking and embarrassing them. Then the tea party saved them by not going third party in 2009-10. And now the establishment has come forward to save the tea party, by inching it away from the cliff and reminding it the true battles are in 2012, and after. Let's hope the tea party takes the opportunity.
As this is written, the White House seems desperate to be seen as consequential. They're trotting out Press Secretary Jay Carney, who stands there looking like a ferret with flop sweat as he insists President Obama is still at the table, still manning the phones and calling shots. Much is uncertain, but the Republicans have made great strides on policy. If they emerge victorious, they had better not crow. The nation is in a continuing crisis, our credit rating is not secure, and no one's interested in he-man gangster dialogue from "The Town." What might thrill America would be a little modesty: "We know we helped get America into some of this trouble, and we hope we've made some progress today in getting us out of it."
***
But that actually is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. It's something I've never seen in national politics.
Martin KozlowskiIt is that nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.
The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."
Maybe Mr. Obama is living proof of the political maxim that they don't care what you know unless they know that you care. But the idea that he is aloof and so inspires aloofness may be too pat. No one was colder than FDR, deep down. But he loved the game and did a wonderful daily impersonation of jut-jawed joy. And people loved him.
The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics, and he isn't good at politics because he doesn't really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The "Analytics Department" is looking for "predictive Modeling/Data Mining" specialists to join the campaign's "multi-disciplinary team of statisticians," which will use "predictive modeling" to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."
This wasn't the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of '92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?
Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectly—really, perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse we've been dealing with? I won't do that. I'm not Bush."
The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.
And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.
So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. Senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.
via online.wsj.com
Apple Has More Money Than U.S. Government « Fox News Insider
Is there a U.S. based company that has more money than the U.S. government? Alisyn Camerota reported that according to Apple’s latest balance sheet, it has $76 billion in cash reserves. As of this morning, Uncle Sam’s piggy bank has a little more than $73 billion.
Texas looking forward to storm: News24: World: News
San Antonio - As much of Texas suffers through one of its worst droughts, many rain-starved Texans are doing something they thought they would never do, looking forward to the arrival of a tropical storm."Someone's going to get it. We hope that it's us," said Danielle Hale, emergency management director in Corpus Christi, right in the middle of the area where Tropical Storm Don is expected to come ashore on Friday night.
Parts of Texas are 38cm short of their average rainfall for this time of year. Don's expected 13-18cm of rain and the fact the storm was not seen bringing damaging winds or a destructive surge, make it a perfect storm for a state sick of water rationing, brown lawns and dying crops, Hale said
via news24.com
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Drought-stricken Texas welcomes Tropical Storm Don | Reuters
(Reuters) - As much of Texas suffers through one of its worst droughts, many rain-starved Texans are doing something they thought they would never do -- looking forward to the arrival of a tropical storm.
"Someone's going to get it. We hope that it's us," is how Danielle Hale sums up the situation. She is the Emergency Management Director on Corpus Christi, right in the middle of the area where Tropical Storm Don is expected to come ashore on Friday night.
Parts of Texas are 15 inches short their average rainfall for this time of year. Don's expected 5 to 7 inches of rain and the fact that the storm was not seen bringing damaging winds or a destructive surge, makes it a perfect storm for a state sick of water rationing, brown lawns and dying crops, Hale said.
"We're not anticipating any evacuation orders," Hale said. "The worst we expect is maybe some beach access roads may have to be closed heading into Friday evening.
via reuters.com
AFP: US soldiers arrested over new Fort Hood plot: report
US soldiers arrested over new Fort Hood plot: report(AFP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — Three US soldiers were arrested for allegedly plotting a new attack on Fort Hood, the Texas base where a former Army psychiatrist went on a deadly rampage in 2009, a report said Thursday.
Fox News, citing an unidentified army source, said that a US soldier who had gone missing without official permission was captured off the base and is being held by police in Killeen, Texas.
The television network said that two more soldiers were arrested when they were found with weapons and explosives. It said it had the men's names but was withholding them.
A US Army spokesman at the base could not immediately be reached for comment early Thursday.
On November 9, 2009, Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who was set to deploy to Afghanistan, allegedly shot dead 12 soldiers and one civilian before police bullets wounded him.
Hasan, who goes on trial on March 5, faces the death penalty if convicted. Investigators allege that Hasan had contact with key Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, a US citizen who is at large in Yemen.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
via google.com
Report: Explosives found in AWOL soldier's car near Ft. Hood - On Deadline
By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY
Updated 59m agoUpdated at 9:38 a.m. ET: KCEN-TV reports that explosives were found in the soldier's car. The TV station quotes Ft. Hood officials as saying the soldier is not stationed there.
Original posting: An AWOL soldier described by police as armed and dangerous has been arrested inKilleen, Texas, near Ft. Hood.
There are conflicting media reports surrounding the arrest.
Fox News, in its report, quotes an Army source as saying a U.S. military serviceman has been arrested in Killeen for allegedly planning another attack on the Army base.
KCEN-TV, meanwhile, says an AWOL soldier was arrested in the town on a warrant on child porn charges. KCEN says police considered the soldier armed and dangerous.
It was not immediately clear if the soldier is the same one identified in the Fox report. KCEN did not mention any plot involving Ft. Hood.
Fox News, quoting another unidentified source, also reports that two other U.S. soldiers were arrested earlier today when they were found in possession of weapons and explosives.
Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army military psychiatrist, is on trial for killing 13 people and wounding 30 in the Ft. Hood shooting in November, 2009.
NEA And Sequoia Put $18M In Brand-Focused Social Media Platform Hearsay Social - The Washington Post
Hearsay Social, a SaaS dashboard for national businesses and their local branches to manage Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter pages, has raised $18 million in new funding med by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with existing investor Sequoia Capital participating. In conjunction with the funding, NEA partner Jon Sakoda is joining the Hearsay Social Board of Directors. To date, Hearsay Social has raised $21 million in funding.
Hearsay Social, which launched to the public in February, aims to help big brands who have local branches (i.e. Starbucks, BestBuy), manage Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages. Because of the highly distributed nature of some companies that have local branches, managing social media pages for stores or offices that are still in compliance with a company’s regulation is a challenging process.
Oil Market Watches Washington, Tropical Storm
By KONSTANTIN ROZHNOV
LONDON—Oil futures were mixed as investors followed developments in the Gulf of Mexico, where the watch area for tropical storm Don was extended, and Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are still at loggerheads over an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
In mid morning, the front-month September Brent contract on London's ICE futures exchange was 30 cents, or 0.3%, higher at $117.73 a barrel. The front-month September contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading down 29 cents at $97.11 per barrel.
Worries that tropical storm Don, which has already prompted the evacuation of nonessential personnel from several oil and gas platforms, could affect oil production are supporting prices, said Andy Sommer, senior oil analyst at EGL.
The storm's current path also seems to be a concern for oil-refining assets, said Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultancy Petromatrix.
Despite the concerns over the storm, many market participants are on the sidelines as U.S. politicians have yet to reach an agreement to raise the country's borrowing limit ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline, analysts said.
"Investors are starting to take some risk off the table as the deadline on the U.S. debt extension comes closer," Mr. Jakob said.
Meanwhile, the price difference between the Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude contracts widened after the U.S. Energy Information Administration Wednesday reported an unexpected increase in the country's oil stocks, pushing U.S. crude lower relative to Brent.
In mid morning, Brent was trading at a premium of $20.65 a barrel to WTI.
"Unless something truly untoward were to take place regarding one of the pipelines bringing crude oil down from Canada or unless suddenly one of the other pipelines in the Midwest were suddenly to be reversed allowing crude to move from Cushing to the Gulf, this spread is going to widen further and perhaps dramatically," Dennis Gartman wrote in his daily Gartman Letter report.
The current situation is such that "if one is a buyer of crude futures one buys Brent; if one is a seller, one sells WTI," Mr. Gartman added.
The ICE gasoil contract for August delivery was down $2.25, or 0.2% at $972.25 per metric ton, while Nymex gasoline for August delivery was 135 points, or 0.4% higher at $3.1558 per gallon.
Write to Konstantin Rozhnov at konstanin.rozhnov @dowjones.com
via online.wsj.com
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
After 102 years, storied Walter Reed Army hospital about to close - KansasCity.com
A solemn final moment came for Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Wednesday, when Army commanders rolled up maroon and green flags, symbols of the soul of the military unit that ran the hospital, and placed them in cloth cases, never to be unfurled again.
Hundreds of soldiers and staff gathered under a white tent on a beautiful morning to observe the symbolic and funereal end of what Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker called "the most treasured military medical center in the world."
via kansascity.com
Lessons for Google+ or How MySpace Lost Out to Facebook - Tech Europe - WSJ
By Nick Clayton
Anybody who joined MySpace when it was the only social networking site to belong to will recognise Tom Anderson. He was the president, founder and everybody’s first friend.
On Tech Crunch he has been offering advice for the latest entrant to the social networking scene under the headline: “Five Things I Learned At MySpace That Could Help Google+”. It could equally be seen as an analysis of how MySpace lost its social networking crown to Facebook.
1) Start seriously courting the journalists, tastemakers and celebrities that are using and/or pontificating about G+.
They will otherwise, he warns, get facts wrong as a result of their personal experiences. He suggests journalists initially exaggerated the size of college-oriented Facebook because it was what their posh kids were using rather than MySpace which was actually more popular at the time.
2) Exhaustively think through the privacy issues.
Mr. Anderson warns: “‘Safety’ hysteria destroyed MySpace in the press. It got MySpace banned from schools, Apple stores, and by well-meaning parents who had been terrorized by what they were reading.
3) Move Google’s top analysts onto the Google+ project.
He says: “Facebook was really good at understanding their onboarding process, knowing what key activities led to later usage.”
4) Hire the best product executors and visionaries in the world.
“I’m not referring to run of the mill product managers and UI developers or ‘social media experts,’ but rather that rare breed of people who have demonstrable experience leading users down the path to internet nirvana,” he says.
Finally he says:
5) There must be one ring to rule them all.
“No that leader won’t always get it right, but the clarity achieved and time saved is crucial. The internet moves at lightning speed. If you mess up, a resolute leader can iterate and fix. “
Could he be talking about Mark Zuckerberg?
via blogs.wsj.com
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Associated Press: Report: 78 dead in Morocco military plane crash
Report: 78 dead in Morocco military plane crashBy HASSAN ALAOUI, Associated Press – 2 hours ago
RABAT, Morocco (AP) — A C-130 military transport plane crashed into a Moroccan mountain Tuesday in bad weather, killing 78 people, the state news agency said. It said there were three survivors.
The crash in a southern region close to the disputed Western Sahara was this country's deadliest in years.
Information Minister Khaled Naciri told The Associated Press that the military believes 78 were killed but that searches are ongoing for all the bodies.
The MAP news agency said all three survivors were seriously injured. It said the plane was carrying 60 members of the military, 12 civilians and nine crew members.
Citing a Royal Armed Forces statement, the report said that the remains of only 42 people have been found so far. It was not immediately clear how the military determined that 78 were killed.
MAP said the plane crashed around 9 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) 10 kilometers (six miles) northeast of Guelmim in southern Morocco, as it prepared to land at the Guelmim military air base.
MAP said the crash was "due to bad weather conditions," without elaborating.
Naciri said the plane was en route from Dakhla, in the disputed Western Sahara, to Kinitra in northern Morocco, and making a stop in Guelmim.
Officials at the military hospital in Guelmim could not be reached.
Guelmim is more than 600 kilometers (360 miles) southwest of the capital Rabat, just north of the Western Sahara and a few dozen kilometers from the Atlantic Coast.
Morocco took over the mineral-rich Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1979. The Saharawi people want to establish the region as an independent state.
U.N. peacekeepers have been there since 1991, and the U.N. has demanded a referendum but Morocco has instead proposed wide-ranging autonomy for estimated half a million people who live in Western Sahara's sparsely populated desert flatland.
The Guelmim region features contrasting desert, oasis and mountain landscapes with their valleys and gorges, part of the so-called Anti-Atlas, an extension of the Atlas mountain chain that runs through Morocco. The region also features a coastal zone known as the "White Beaches of Guelmim" with the beach in nearby Tan Tan.
Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
via google.com
Monday, July 25, 2011
Books-A-Million drops bid for Borders stores | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com
Books-A-Million, Inc. has ended its efforts to take over 30 Borders stores, the company announced today.
“The parties could not agree on terms and the going out of business sales at these locations commenced,” a company statement said.
Borders is in bankruptcy and currently liquidating all its remaining stores, including one in Flowood.
Books-A-Million, based in Birmingham, is one of the nation’s leading book retailers with 231 stores in 23 states and the District of Columbia.
Google+ Games Stream Could Overtake Facebook, Top 10 Games Users Want to Play - International Business Times
Google+ knows the gaming industry will be huge in their quest to get on par with rival Facebook. After numerous assumptions that the online search giant are in pursuit of adding games to their latest social network project, a leak indicates that games may be on the way.
Facebook already has Zynga under its control which produces 266 million monthly active users who combine to spend 2 billion minutes a day for online games. Those who play Facebook games come out to 200 million monthly users. Facebook obviously holds an advantage getting a head start but Google will have several advantages as it rolls into the games scene with cash, developers, and reach.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Stock futures, dollar fall on no debt deal | Reuters
(Reuters) - Wall Street futures fell and the dollar dropped as Washington appeared no closer to raising the debt ceiling in order to avert a devastating default.
S&P 500 futures fell at the open of electronic trading as investors grew increasingly worried at the lack of progress. The benchmark S&P was down 1 percent, or 14 points, to 1326.00.
Early currency trading suggested a move away from the dollar, with the biggest drop in the greenback coming against the Swiss franc. In early Asian trading, the dollar dropped to 0.8121 against the Swiss franc, down 0.7 percent.
The decline in futures points to a poor open for U.S. markets.
White House officials and Republican leaders scrambled on Sunday to reassure global markets the United States would avert a debt default, but the two sides were still not close to a deal. House Speaker John Boehner told fellow Republicans on a conference call that a large-scale debt deal was not possible with President Barack Obama.
via reuters.com
Boehner: GOP ready to act alone on debt deal - Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (AP) — With bipartisan debt-limit talks deadlocked, House Republicans and Senate Democrats readied rival emergency fallback plans Sunday in hopes of reassuring world financial markets the U.S. government will avoid an unprecedented default.
In a conference call, Speaker John Boehner summoned his conservative rank and file to swing behind a "new measure" that could clear both houses of Congress.
"It won't be 'Cut, Cap and Balance' as we passed it," he said, referring to a measure — killed in the Senate on Friday — that would have required spending cuts of an estimated $6 trillion as well as congressional approval of a constitutional balanced budget amendment for ratification by the states.
The new approach is "going to require some of you to make some sacrifices," he added, according to a person familiar with his remarks.
Separately, President Barack Obama invited the two top congressional Democrats to a highly unusual White House meeting Sunday evening.
One of them, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, was at work on a Democratic fallback measure, too.
Without congressional action by Aug. 2, the Treasury will be unable to pay all its bills, risking a default that could have severe consequences for the U.S. economy and the world's, too.
Details of the rival plans were sketchy.
Republican officials said Boehner envisioned an increase in the nation's debt limit by $1 trillion and slightly more than that in federal spending cuts, with the promise of additional progress on both sides of the ledger if Congress could agree.
Democratic officials said Reid was at work on legislation to raise the government's debt limit by $2.4 trillion — enough to assure no recurrence of the current crisis until 2013 — and reduce spending by slightly more.
They said that plan envisioned no higher taxes.
Administration officials have stopped just short of promising to veto the approach Boehner outlined. Obama has also said for months any bill must include higher revenue.
The White House was largely consigned to a spectator's role on a weekend that began with Boehner's decision to call off talks with Obama.
But the president arranged an early evening meeting with Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
Asked earlier what the administration's plan was to avoid default, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said, "Our plan is to get Congress to raise the debt ceiling on time."
The state of play veered between bipartisanship and brinkmanship on an issue of immense economic consequences.
Despite hours of compromise talks in the Capitol, lawmakers' aides had so far been unable to agree on a two-step plan that would satisfy Obama's demand for a large enough increase in the debt limit to tide the Treasury over until after the 2012 elections.
Interviewed on Fox, Boehner said, "I would prefer to have a bipartisan approach to solve this problem. If that is not possible, I and my Republican colleagues in the House are prepared to move on our own."
He arranged to brief the Republican rank and file on a conference call late in the day.
It was unclear when Reid would disclose details of his own plan.
The officials who described the rival fallback plans spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Boehner's plan, still under negotiation on Capitol Hill, is intended to get the nation beyond this crisis and snag enough votes from House Republicans who won't raise the debt limit without spending cuts, too.
Deeper and more complex reductions in the nation's deficits would be part of the deal, but under later timelines.
White House chief of staff William Daley said Obama was insisting that any package must expand the debt ceiling beyond the next presidential and congressional elections and into 2013 to provide economic certainty. Daley said anything short of that would be a gimmick and prompt the world to say: "These people just can't get their act together."
White House and congressional leaders talked past each other on the Sunday TV shows as negotiations unfolded in secrecy.
"There will be a two-stage process. It's just not physically possible to do all of this in one step," Boehner said. "I know the president is worried about his next election. But, my God, shouldn't he be worried about the country?"
Republican leaders called their rank and file back to Washington earlier than expected for the new work week and set a mid-afternoon Monday meeting to go over the debt-limit legislation.
With an eye on the financial markets, Geithner insisted anew the United States would not default.
"It's just unthinkable," Geithner said. "We never do that. It's not going to happen."
The debt deal-making has consumed Washington for weeks and has put on display a government that at times risks utter dysfunction.
Even after talks about between Obama and Boehner broke down in spectacular fashion Friday, Geithner said the two men were still negotiating.
He also suggested the ambitious framework the two leaders had discussed, targeting a deficit reduction of $4 trillion, remained under consideration.
"I don't know. It may be pretty hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again," Boehner said of that grand plan. "But my last offer is still out there. I have never taken my last offer off of the table and they never agreed to my last offer."
That last offer included $800 billion in new tax revenues as part of a broad overhaul that would lower tax rates. Obama wanted $400 billion more in tax revenue for deficit reduction to help balance out the spending cuts. Or, if not that, a reduction in some of the proposed cuts being discussed to entitlement programs such as Medicare.
The talks halted primarily over that issue and over how to ensure that both parties kept their reform promises in the months ahead.
Any plan must get through the Democratic-run Senate, where Majority Leader Reid has called a short-term debt limit expansion unacceptable.
Obama's role looms, too.
Asked if Obama would veto a plan that did not extend the government's borrowing authority into 2013, Daley said, "Yes."
One key Republican lawmaker scoffed.
"I think that's a ridiculous position because that's what he's going to get presented with," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
Under any scenario, Washington's leaders have run themselves almost out of time.
It will take days to move legislation through Congress. A default could cause catastrophic damage to the standing and the economy of the United States.
Daley said, in fact, the consequences are already taking hold.
"I don't think there's any question there's been enormous damage done to our creditworthiness around the world," Daley said.
Boehner appeared on "Fox News Sunday." Geithner was on Fox, ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union." Daley and Coburn spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press," and Daley also appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation."
___
Associated Press writers David Espo, Alan Fram and Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.
via news.yahoo.com
Jeb Bush doesn't 'anticipate' a run - Maggie Haberman
Jeb Bush, who has made clear he isn't running for president this cycle, raised some eyebrows on Sean Hannity's Fox News show Friday night with this comment about a potential campaign:
"I don’t anticipate that. You never say never. This is a standard answer that I’ve kind of learned how to give which is — you never say never, but I never rule out being on Dancing with the Stars either … there are a lot of ways you can make a difference."
He went on, with respect to whether any of the current field can win, "If you recall, my dad in 1992 had an approval rating that was double what President Obama has right now and he was running against the seven dwarfs I think. … And one of those dwarfs became president … dwarf, you know President Clinton, so the notion that somehow these aren’t folks that are capable of winning I just think is ridiculous. These are good people."
They're also, per Bush, "capable. They’ve made the all-in commitment and this yearning for something else is very flattering for someone if you’re that someone else. But in reality I think this race, we have qualified candidates and as it gets closer to the primaries to the caucuses and primaries, I think people will begin to see the mettle of the men and women that are running."
Continue Reading
via politico.com
Debt Talks Impasse Leads To Market Fears : NPR
The opening of financial markets in East Asia is causing anxiety in official Washington and beyond. The concern is that a Friday night breakdown in talks between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner on raising the debt ceiling may have negative repercussions when trading gets under way.
More meetings took place all day Saturday, first at the White House, then at the Capitol, seeking that elusive bipartisan deal.
The four top congressional leaders all showed up at the White House for a late Saturday morning meeting convened by President Obama; they all avoided contact with reporters afterward. The White House put out a statement reiterating Obama's opposition to a short-term extension of the debt ceiling, saying it would cause the country's credit rating to be downgraded. It was likely in response to reports that such a short-term deal had been floated at the meeting by the two Republican leaders, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Boehner.
McConnell released a statement saying only that the bipartisan congressional leadership was committed to working on new legislation to prevent default. Late in the afternoon, Boehner hosted a meeting in his office, flanked by McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on his right and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on his left. During a brief photo-op, Boehner blithely ignored reporters' questions.
The two Democrats in the meeting, Reid and Pelosi, had just released a statement saying they opposed any short-term fix for the debt ceiling crisis. The two emerged from the meeting nearly an hour later stony-faced and silent. Aides reported they were at an impasse and had no plans for further meetings. Boehner had earlier told fellow House Republicans in a conference call that he hoped to be able to issue what he called a "framework for progress" before the Asian markets opened. The sticking point appears to be the Republican leaders' insistence on a short-term deal to raise the debt ceiling. At the White House Friday evening, just after talks with Boehner had collapsed, Obama made clear he wanted to raise the debt ceiling high enough not to have to do it again before voters go to the polls next year.
"They can come up with any plans that they want, and bring them up here, and we will work on them," he said. "The only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election, into 2013."
Boehner aligned himself with the president's stance on that issue when asked about it at the news conference he held Friday evening.
"I'm not really interested in a short-term increase in the debt limit," he said. "I believe that we have two challenges, that we have to increase the debt limit and we have to deal with our deficit and our debt."
But Boehner also made clear he was not backing down on the two conditions he's insisted on for raising the debt ceiling.
"Spending cuts ... must be greater than the increase in the debt limit, and no tax increases," he said.
In other words, all spending cuts and no new taxes to reduce deficits — an approach Obama and Democratic leaders say they cannot agree to. Still, the president said Friday he trusts the debt ceiling will be raised by the deadline a week from Tuesday.
"I am confident simply because I cannot believe that Congress would end up being that irresponsible that they would not send a package that avoids a self-inflicted wound to the economy at a time when things are so difficult," he said.
Boehner was similarly confident:
"No one wants to default on the full faith and credit of the United States government and I'm convinced that we will not," he said.
If that's to happen, a deal to raise the debt ceiling may have to be reached no later than Monday for Congress to enact it by the Aug. 2 deadline.
via npr.org
Saturday, July 23, 2011
AFP: Former top US military officer John Shalikashvili dies
Former top US military officer John Shalikashvili dies(AFP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — Retired army general John Shalikashvili, the first foreign-born chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, died early Saturday of complications from a stroke, a military hospital said. He was 75.
Shalikashvili -- known simply as "Shali" -- passed away at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Washington, Joint Base Lewis-McChord said in a statement. He had previously suffered a severe stroke in 2004.
Shalikashvili is survived by his wife Joan and their son Brant.
A public memorial service is planned for August 6 in Tacoma, to be followed at an undetermined date by a funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery just outside the US capital.
The Polish-born Shalikashvili became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1993, serving under then-president Bill Clinton until he retired in 1997.
"As we mourn his passing, so, too, do we reflect on his contributions to our nation -- the lives he changed, the careers he mentored, the impact he made simply by virtue of his character and commitment," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen said.
"We are a stronger, more capable military today because of his efforts to make us so. He will be deeply missed."
President Barack Obama hailed his "only in America" story, born on June 27, 1936 in Warsaw to Georgian refugee parents fleeing Russia's Bolshevik uprising.
He was granted US citizenship in 1958, six years after immigrating to Illinois. It was his first citizenship ever as he had previously been considered "stateless."
"With the passing of general John M. Shalikashvili, the United States has lost a genuine soldier-statesman whose extraordinary life represented the promise of America and the limitless possibilities that are open to those who choose to serve it," Obama said in a statement.
"From his arrival in the United States as a 16-year old Polish immigrant after the Second World War, to a young man who learned English from John Wayne movies, to his rise to the highest ranks of our military, Shali's life was an 'only in America' story."
NATO's 10th supreme allied commander for Europe and commander-in-chief of United States European Command from 1992 to 1993, Shalikashvili was first drafted into the US Army in 1958, rising through the ranks of every level of unit command from battalion to division during four decades of service.
He served from 1968-69 in Vietnam and headed Operation Provide Comfort, a peacekeeping and humanitarian mission that defended Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1990s. It was the US military's first major humanitarian mission.
He also led military operations in Bosnia, Haiti and elsewhere around the world.
"John was an extraordinary patriot who faithfully defended this country for four decades, rising to the very pinnacle of the military profession," said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who worked closely with Shalikashvili in the Clinton administration when he was White House chief of staff and the general was Joints Chiefs chairman.
"I came to rely on his wise counsel, his wealth of military expertise, and his candor as we were challenged by foreign policy crises in Haiti, the Balkans, and elsewhere," added Panetta, praising Shalikashvili as "one of this country's finest."
Shalikashvili had expressed support in his final years for a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the US military, saying there was no evidence that allowing gay soldiers to be open about their sexual orientation would undermine military readiness.
The ban is now set to be formally repealed on September 20.
Clinton awarded Shalikashvili the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award given by the United States. An inscription on the medal thanked him for working "tirelessly to improve our nation's security and promote world peace."
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
via google.com
Three dead in shooting at Arizona motorcycle rally | Reuters
(Reuters) - A shooting late Friday at a motorcycle rally in Northern Arizona left three dead and one critically wounded, police said on Saturday.
The killings at Mormon Lake, a few miles south of Flagstaff, happened as an annual rally called "Too Broke for Sturgis" was just getting underway, the Coconino County Sheriff's Office said.
A sergeant with the sheriff's office assigned to the event radioed in at about 11:20 p.m. Friday that he had heard shots fired.
via reuters.com
Boehner Said to Seek $3 Trillion Cuts, Signal for Markets
(Updates with comment from analyst in fourth paragraph, plans for new meeting in sixth paragraph.)
July 23 (Bloomberg) -- House Speaker John Boehner told Republican lawmakers they need to provide a positive signal on a plan to avert a U.S. default before Asian financial markets open tomorrow, Republican congressional aides said.
Boehner wants at least $3 trillion in cuts in a two-step plan to accompany an increase in the U.S. debt limit, one of the aides said. Concern about Asian markets' reaction to the collapse of talks on a long-term deficit plan between Boehner and President Barack Obama was a subject in a meeting today among the president and congressional leaders, the aides said.
The markets could be tumultuous if a plan isn't negotiated over the weekend, said Christian Cooper, head of U.S. dollar derivatives trading in New York at Jefferies & Co.
"The markets will be under very real pressure at the open because the assumption will be there is really no resolution to this," Cooper said. "The breakdown in negotiations has crossed the line from the political posturing of the last few weeks to potentially a very real crisis.
"The Tea Party is effectively playing Russian roulette with the bond market and they will, with certainty, lose," Cooper said. Jefferies is one of 20 primary dealers that trade with the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Boehner's office said congressional leaders would meet at his office at 5:30 p.m. today.
No Short-Term Deal
Obama remained opposed to any increase in the $14.3 trillion debt limit that doesn't go through the next election in November 2012. He told lawmakers today that a short-term extension would be "irresponsible" and "could cause our country's credit rating to be downgraded, causing harm to our economy," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.
Congressional leaders sought to produce a plan that could pass both chambers.
"Over this weekend Congress will forge a responsible path forward," Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement after the White House meeting. "House and Senate leaders will be working to find a bipartisan solution to significantly reduce Washington spending and preserve the full faith and credit of the United States."
One Republican congressional aide said that under Boehner's scenario, a first vote next week would provide a down payment on spending reductions, though the amount hasn't been determined. Another vote would be held later.
Lawmakers 'Committed'
Boehner told Republican lawmakers yesterday he would need to introduce legislation by July 27, one lawmaker said, to ensure both chambers could enact it under their regular procedures before Aug. 2, when the Treasury has projected it will exhaust its legal borrowing authority.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said top lawmakers are "committed" to preventing a U.S. default.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the leaders must "make every moment count." She said there would "absolutely, positively not" be a short-term deal and that leaders weren't talking about raising the eligibility age for Medicare.
With the debt-limit deadline approaching, Obama said at the White House last night that "at minimum" Congress must act to avoid a default that would roil financial markets and damage the economy. He said he was consulting with Treasury Department officials about the potential consequences of a default.
'Have Some Answers'
"It's very important that the leadership understands that Wall Street will be opening on Monday, and we'd better have some answers during the course of the next several days," Obama said.
Boehner yesterday withdrew from the efforts the two have pursued to revamp the government's finances over the next decade.
via sfgate.com
Norway Terror Suspect Released YouTube Video
By SVEN GRUNDBERG and VANESSA FUHRMANS
OSLO -- A couple of hours before the devastating bomb blast in Norway's capital, terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik released a video on YouTube where he calls for conservatives to "embrace martyrdom."
TV2 said sources within Norway's police confirmed the video was uploaded by Mr. Breivik, who was charged Saturday for the bombing and shootings in Norway's capital and a nearby island Friday that left at least 92 people dead.
The video was uploaded by a user called AndrewBerwick on YouTube, hours before the bomb in the centre of Oslo went off, TV2 said. It calls for conservatives to "embrace martyrdom."
"[If] the multiculturalist elites of Europe continue to refuse to voluntarily transfer political and military power to our conservative revolutionary forces ... then [the second world war] is likely going to appear as a picnic compared to the coming carnage," the video stated in captions.
Signed also by an AndrewBerwick, an English translation of the name Anders Breivik, was a manifest called "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence" on the site www.freak.no. The manifest is 1,500 page description on Mr. Breivik's background and political viewpoints.
Friday's violence was the country's worst since World War II and among the deadliest-ever attacks by a lone gunman.
The video has since been removed from YouTube.
Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at vanessa.fuhrmans@wsj.com
via online.wsj.com
BBC News - Amy Winehouse found dead, aged 27
Singer Amy Winehouse, 27, has been found dead at her home, the Press Association has reported.
Last month, the north Londoner pulled out of her European tour after she was jeered at her comeback gig in Serbia for appearing too drunk to perform.
For 90 minutes, she mumbled through parts of songs and at times left the stage - leaving her band to fill in.
The troubled singer had a long battle with drink and drugs which overshadowed her musical career in recent years.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed that a 27-year-old woman had died in Camden and that the cause of death was as yet unexplained.
London Ambulance Service had been called to the flat at 1554 BST and sent two ambulances but the woman died, it said.
Winehouse had won widespread acclaim, aged 20, with her 2003 debut album, Frank.
But it was 2006's Back to Black which brought her worldwide stardom, winning five Grammy Awards.
via bbc.co.uk
Return of Mass Layoffs a Grim Sign for U.S. Workers | Daily Ticker - Yahoo! Finance
Putting pressure on an already lousy job market, the mass layoff is making a comeback. In the past week, Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Borders announced a combined 23,000 in job cuts. (See: Another Retailer Bites the Dust: Borders Doomed by Amazon Deal, Davidowitz Says)
Those announcements follow 41,432 in planned cuts in June, up 11.6% from May and 5.3% vs. a year earlier, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Meanwhile, state and local governments have cut 142,000 jobs this year, The WSJ reports, and Wall Street is braced for another round of cutbacks. This week, Goldman Sachs announced plans to let go 1000 fixed-income traders.
If these trends continue, we may soon be talking about losses in the monthly employment data -- not just disappointing growth, says Howard Davidowitz, CEO of Davidowitz & Associates
"Everything in business is confidence," Davidowitz says. "You lose confidence and businesses can't deal with that [and] who could have confidence with what's going on in Washington?"
Davidowitz is bipartisan in his criticism, calling the U.S. political system "dysfunctional and deranged." (See: "A Bunch of Morons in Washington": Howard Davidowitz Handicaps the Debt Ceiling Debate)
Friday, July 22, 2011
Norway police say gunman kills at least 80 youths | Reuters
OSLO |
(Reuters) - A gunman shot dead at least 80 youths at a summer camp of the ruling Labour Party on Friday, police said.OSLO
"The updated knowledge we are sitting on now is at least 80," police chief Oystein Maeland told a news conference. "We can't guarantee that won't increase somewhat," he said, adding some were badly injured.
Previously, police had said that at least 10 had been killed in the shooting at the Utoeya island northwest of Oslo, along with seven killed by a bomb blast in central Oslo.
Maeland said the attack had reached "catastrophic dimensions."
via reuters.com
Police: At least 80 killed in Norwegian youth camp shooting | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
OSLO, Norway — Police say at least 80 people were killed in a shooting spree at the youth camp of Norway's Labor Party.
Police director Oystein Maeland told reporters early Saturday they had discovered many more victims after initially reporting the death toll at 10.
Maeland couldn't say how many people were injured in the shooting.
Hundreds of youth were attending the summer camp organized by the youth wing of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labor Party on the island of Utoya.
via freep.com
Debt talks break down; "We have run out of time" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News
With eleven days before the August 2 deadline, talks to negotiate a deal to raise the debt limit have broken down, leaving the United States on the cusp of a possible economic catastrophe.
"We have run out of time," Mr. Obama said in acknowledging the breakdown.
House Speaker John Boehner walked away from negotiations Friday, complaining that Mr. Obama would not agree to Republican demands that the deal not include any tax increases. Shortly after Boehner made his decision public, Mr. Obama, appearing frustrated, appeared before reporters to explain what had been on the table and hammer Boehner for walking away from an "extraordinarily fair deal."
The deal on the table, as Mr. Obama laid it out, included more than $1 trillion in cuts to domestic and defense discretionary spending, as well as $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He said he asked for approximately $1.2 trillion in revenue increases that he said would have come from eliminating loopholes and deductions and engaging in broad tax reform, not hiking tax rates.
The deal, he said, called for less in tax increases than the deal worked out by the bipartisan "Gang of Six" negotiators, while including as much in discretionary savings. He said if the deal was unbalanced, "it was unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue."
via cbsnews.com
Thursday, July 21, 2011
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